South Korean composer Whan Ri-Ahn began his formal composition studies at the Interlochen Arts Academy in the United States, before attending the Royal College of Music in London, where he studied with Kenneth Hesketh and received the James Horner Scholarship Award, supported by Sara Horner. He later continued his composition studies at the Haute école de musique de Genève in Switzerland with Michael Jarrell, and studied electronic music with Luis Naón and Gilbert Nouno.
Ri-Ahn completed his Master's degree in composition at the Conservatoire de Paris (CNSMDP), where he studied with Frédéric Durieux. He also studied electronic music in Paris with Yan Maresz, Luis Naón, and Grégoire Lorieux.
His music has been commissioned and performed by major orchestras, ensembles, institutions, and musicians, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Contrechamps, Ensemble Proton Bern, Ensemble TIMF, Pierre Bleuse, Johannes Kalitzke, and Inmo Yang. His work L'Oiseau dans le Temps II was premiered at Radio France's Festival Présences 2023.
He was nominated for Le Tremplin Musical 2023 of the Fondation Prince Pierre de Monaco, and received the 2023 Marthe Depelsenaire Composition Prize from the Fondation de France, as well as the 2023 Composition Prize of the Fondation Francis et Mica Salabert.
Ri-Ahn was appointed to the London Symphony Orchestra's Panufnik Scheme (2024/25) and the composition residency at the Académie du Festival d'Aix-en-Provence (2025). He is currently pursuing doctoral studies at King's College London under Sir George Benjamin, while also being mentored by Unsuk Chin.
Fantasía Nostálgica began with a conversation with the violinist Inmo Yang about a letter Johannes Brahms wrote to Clara Schumann. In that letter, a simple marking - a crescendo followed immediately by a decrescendo - became the starting point of our discussion. I carried that gesture with me for a long time, wondering what it might mean to me as a composer.
Only much later, after my grandmother's passing while I was far from home, I found myself looking up at the stars. It was then that the gesture came to resemble reaching towards a distant star: a movement of longing that extends outward before quietly falling back. From this image grew a work that explores nostalgia - not simply as remembrance, but as the distance between oneself and something forever beyond reach.
The violin was my first instrument. Even after I left it for many years, I continued to think of the violin and its case as a quiet repository of memory - a place where fragments of the past remain, waiting to be reopened. In this work, I imagined the instrument itself transforming the concert hall into a chamber of memory.
The piece unfolds in six interconnected movements. Like a children's word-chain game, each movement begins with the final pitch of the previous one, allowing one memory to give rise naturally to the next. A talkative tightrope walker, a ghostly merry-go-round, a grandmother's old tale, a lullaby for counting stars, dreams, and finally P.S. (The Postcard from the Old Drawer) appear not as episodes in a linear narrative, but as fragments of recollection that surface, overlap, and gradually fade away. The final movement returns quietly to the present, as though an old drawer - or perhaps the violin case itself - were gently closed.
Fantasía Nostálgica was commissioned by violinist Inmo Yang, who gave the premiere at the Carl Bechstein Hall in Kronberg on July 3, 2024.
Parole sparse (the title is in Italian, and means Scattered words) is a musical composition that delves into the exploration of language and non-language, interweaving verbal and non-verbal dimensions of human expression. Drawing inspiration from my experiences in filmmaking and building upon the artistic concepts of my previous works, Rituel au tombeau d'Isang Yun and Suicidal Impulse, this piece was further inspired by Alda Merini's words "Spazio, io voglio tanto spazio," as it unravels the dynamic interplay between linguistic elements and their intriguing absence.
In “Rituel au tombeau d'Isang Yun”, I embarked on a transformative journey, translating Korean funeral ritual chants, texts and scenes into a musical narrative. This endeavour allowed me to convey profound emotions and stories solely through the language of sound. Similarly, in the electroacoustic composition Suicidal Impulse I transformed recorded voices and texts to blur the boundaries of identity, creating a narrative figure in a perpetual state of metamorphosis.
Derived from the same root as Rituel au tombeau d'Isang Yun and Suicidal Impulse, Parole sparse approaches its exploration of language and non-language differently, forging a unique path while retaining a connection to its artistic origins. With Parole sparse the instrumental ensemble itself assumes a central role as a unified yet enigmatic entity, seeking to embody language in a verbal manner. Each instrument becomes a vessel for linguistic expression, with phrases and patterns seamlessly conversing in their musical dialogue.
Moreover, the composition scatters and recollects consonants and vowels throughout the musical fabric, drawing inspiration from Alda Merini's "Io voglio tanto spazio." This intentional fragmentation and dispersion of linguistic elements echo the complexities of both spoken and unspoken aspects of the human experience. The resulting sonic tapestry becomes a canvas where meaning, emotion, and sound are woven together, challenging conventional communication and inviting listeners to embrace a more profound level of understanding.
Seong-Hwan Lee/Whan Ri-Ahn