Instrumentalists: Invasion from the Orient

Until recently, the idea of Orientals performing Western music seemed about as freakish as Heifetz playing the one-string ichigenkin. Now all that has changed. In the past few years, American and European concert halls have experienced something close to a full-scale invasion by talented Korean and Japanese musicians. Last week, Japan's Seiji Ozawa, 32, conducted programs of Rossini and Hindemith in Canada; Korean Violinist Young Uck Kim, 20, performed Saint-Saƫns' Concerto No. 3 in Corpus Christi, Texas; and an eight-year-old Japanese cherub named Hitomi Kasuya played part of a Mozart violin...

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