Word: myung
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...Myungs. Because six of the Chungs have the first name Myung (which means "bright, shining like a star"), and even Kyung shares her middle name, Wha, with a sister, individual members are identified to outsiders by the instrument they play.* "Name choosing in Korea is not an easy matter," observes Pianist-Brother Myung-Whun. "A parent just doesn't go to a phone directory. You go to a specialist in making names, maybe a fortuneteller. I'm happy my parents went to the trouble to do it right...
...businessman whose enterprises have included operating the Korean restaurant at the Seattle World's Fair and running a mushroom plantation. Their mother loved music, and each child began piano lessons by five. The children agree that they immediately took to music, if not to the piano. Myung-Wha used to fall asleep at the keyboard until one day her mother turned up with a cello and a cello teacher. "I had never heard a cello," she recalls. A year and a half later, at eleven, she became one of the first people in Korea to perform publicly a cello...
...know why we are so determined," says Kyung-Wha. "But our family dislikes anything in between." The habit of toil was instilled early. At home, the children would gather hi one large room in a communal practice for the contests they were encouraged to enter. Myung-Whun, the next to youngest, played his first concerto at seven with the Seoul Philharmonic. Still, he considers himself a "late starter...
...when Myung-Whun was nine, the family assembled in Seattle for the World's Fair. "For the next five years I went to school, played a lot of sports and got into a normal sort of life," he says. He did not decide to become a professional musician until he was 14 -when he asked his parents' permission to go to New York. There ahead of him were two of his older sisters: Kyung-Wha had studied at Juilliard and was a pupil of Ivan Galamian, and Myung-Wha was a pupil of first Leonard Rose and then...
...They lead the circumscribed life of performing artists. "Whenever I get on a plane, I always hope it will be to explore a new city," says Kyung-Wha. "Instead, I must be content to explore a new audience." Their personalities are similar only in a courteous sense of selfimportance. Myung-Whun is intense, Kyung-Wha fiery, and Myung-Wha pacific. When family frictions do arise, the Chungs may find their strongest bond in their individual ability to make shafts of sound seem more vivid than anything else in life...