A Korean in the heart of Palma

PalmThe only person who has a monument on Palma's Paseo del Born wasn't a king, a general, a politician, or a saint. Nor was he born in Mallorca, but he loved it with all his soul. He was an artist: a world-famous musician of Korean origin who composed his country's national anthem and settled on the island, where he created and conducted his orchestra, the predecessor of today's Balearic Symphony Orchestra. Let us remember Eaktay Ahn on the 60th anniversary of his death, September 16, 1965.

This singular figure came into the world on December 5, 1906, in Pyongyang, now the North Korean capital. Despite its millennia-long history, Korea is a country that has suffered bad luck for more than a century: a Japanese colony from 1910 to 1945, the north was liberated by the Soviets and the south by the Americans, creating a division that continues to this day. With the bloody interlude, moreover, of the war from 1950 to 1953, when the North tried, unsuccessfully, to take over the South, resulting in a partition – so far – definitive.

Ahn belonged to a well-off family – "son of kings", according to Mallorca Post OfficeHe felt a musical calling from a young age, and this led his brother to give him a violin and a phonograph. At school, apart from his education, there was also a deep-seated pro-independence sentiment against Japanese domination, with which Eaktay Ahn soon sympathized. This created certain problems for him with the Japanese police, so he had to falsify his documentation to be able to move to Tokyo—the metropolis—to study music. His first instrument was the cello; he would later become a composer and conductor. But he was capable of playing virtually any instrument.

The death of his father in 1928 weakened the family economy, and Eaktay had to earn a living playing in a restaurant. Furthermore, his cello broke. The Japanese police banned him from giving concerts. The obvious solution was abroad. And, indeed, he moved to the United States, and later to Europe. Between San Francisco and Berlin, he composed new music for the Korean anthem. Aegukga, which until then had been performed using the melody ofAuld Lang Syne, the Scottish song they wear to ring in the new year in American movies.

"Do you have an orchestra in Mallorca?"

It was in Vienna that he met his future mentor, composer and conductor Richard Strauss. Strauss offered him a substitute role for a concert he was scheduled to give in Budapest, and it was the first relief concert of a career that would lead him to conduct some of the world's finest orchestras. He is commemorated in the Hungarian capital with a bust, even though, when he visited there in 1940, they asked him if he was a spy: he wouldn't be very accustomed to the presence of Orientals.

In 1946, Eaktay Ahn was in Barcelona, ​​​​where he had just married Dolores Talavera, the woman of his life and mother of his three daughters. They were both visited by Julio Sanmartín, secretary of the Círculo de Bellas Artes de Palma, founded only five years earlier and a kind of oasis of cultural interest in the dullness of the early Franco era. Sanmartín asked him if he could come to Mallorca. "Do you have an orchestra?" Ahn asked, thinking he was being invited to conduct it. But that was precisely it: Mallorca didn't have an orchestra, and the Círculo had thought that perhaps he would be the right person to create it.

Dolores Talavera said that, with Mallorca, what her husband felt was a sudden infatuation. "How beautiful!" he exclaimed, just as he saw Palma for the first time upon arriving by boat. That same afternoon, he agreed to take charge of the future Symphony Orchestra: "Having an orchestra on this island is like having a place in heaven," he told his wife. That first Christmas in Palma, the Korean musician heard the Song of the Sibyl, which left a deep impression on him. In Valldemossa, he discovered one of the first words he learned in Majorcan Catalan: "Horabaixa," which he found very musical.

Eaktay Ahn got down to work suddenly. They arrived in Mallorca in mid-November 1946, and on the following January 14, the brand-new Mallorca Symphony Orchestra gave its first concert in Palma's Teatro Principal, a packed house. The engineer Antonio Parietti—president of the Círculo de Bellas Artes—and the musician Josep Balaguer—owner of Can Balaguer—were two of his main collaborators. And, above all, Marc Ferragut, the man who created the Auditorium. "I need more violins" for the orchestra, Ahn would tell him, and Ferragut would move heaven and earth to find them.

All affability and friendliness, Ahn was, on the other hand, very demanding when it came to conducting. "He kills us," the musicians would say. "This man of fragile appearance," a journalist claimed, "would transform into a tiger, a lion, a giant." He demanded that a critic who had barged into a rehearsal be removed, otherwise he wouldn't continue. According to the witness of the concertmaster's daughter, "he would end up with his shirt completely soaked after rehearsals and it would have to be changed." He literally put his "sweating" into practice. Quite unusual for a man who was born in Korea, a country known as "the land of calm mornings," and who had ended up on "the island of calm."

Batons made in Manacor

Thus, it's no surprise that he didn't earn enough for batons and that many broke during rehearsals. And that was no small feat, because they were shipped from Paris, where they were made to his liking. That was the case until the Manacor musician Llorenç Morey offered to make them himself. They had to be light and strong. And indeed, from then on, all of Eaktay Ahn's batons were from Manacor, made of sycamore wood, with cork handles. Incidentally, he was very fond of the town's coat of arms, which, as is well known, depicts a hand with a heart.

Eaktay and his wife settled into a villa in Son Matet, in the San Agustín area of Palma. Their neighbor was the Greek collector and patron Juan de Saridakis, the owner of Marivent—now the summer residence of the King and Queen of Spain for the next few days—with whom he established a good friendship. Mallorca became home to the couple and their three Mallorcan daughters: Helena, Ana Cecilia, and Leonor. The house had a small garden, where he occasionally took to farming. He raised chickens, and the chicks became incredibly close to him, climbing onto the piano to keep him company while he studied.

He soon became very popular in Palma, as Dolores Talavera describes, "his oriental figure with a white pith helmet, his briefcase stuffed with sheet music in his hand, crossing the streets with long, quick strides." His usual meeting place with musicians and friends was the now-defunct Granja Reus, on Sant Feliu Street. Since he pronounced it "Granja Leus," his entourage began to refer to the place as "La Gran Jaleo." "All the Mallorcans know me," he told the woman, "they are affectionate with me, they warm my heart. I can't feel like a foreigner here, since they almost make me feel like just another Mallorcan."

In June 1950, the Korean War broke out, which, understandably, affected him terribly. The Mallorcans, despite not being known for their expressiveness, were also concerned about the conflict that had caused their illustrious guest so much grief. The tram conductor asked him if he had read the newspaper, because it carried a wealth of information about what was happening in his country.

In 1955, at the height of the conflict, Eaktay Ahn was finally able to travel to Korea. It was the first time he had returned to his country in twenty-five years. The welcome was ecstatic. But he also went to Japan, and in Tokyo, a Japanese singer performed the anthem he had composed. Former enemies were reconciled thanks to his music.

His performances abroad took up so much of his time that, in 1959, he passed the baton of the Mallorca Symphony Orchestra to Gerardo Pérez Busquier. He had conducted 230 concerts with the Mallorcan ensemble and premiered 23 works by island composers. He continued his travels, and so much activity eventually took its toll, causing him to fall seriously ill. "I'll be cured in Palma," he assured Dolores. But Palma didn't work the miracle; he died on September 16, 1965, at just 58 years old.

The house museum that was his residence in Palma and a street in Can Pastilla commemorate Eaktay Ahn, as does the monument on Passeig del Born, with the sculpture of Joan Costa. The shadows of sound ('The Shadows of Sound'). A Korean who gave his heart to Mallorca, forever present in the heart of Ciutat.

Information prepared based on the biography of Eaktay Ahn by Dolores Talavera and texts by Bernardo Obrador, Bartomeu Bestard (Diario de Mallorca), Delfín Colomé and Eunsook Yang.