RECITAL SHOWS EDUCATION IN MUSIC IS BEST IN U.S.

Sterling P. Cossaboom is chairperson of the Department of Music at Southeast Missouri State University.

America's educational system is in shambles! American youth can't compete! The "gloom and doomers" would like us to believe this, but anyone who attended Tarina Kang's violin recital at Centenary Methodist Church on Sunday, March 29, 1992 knows better. The audience experienced a level of professionalism and self-assurance that is "first class" anywhere.

Tarina Kang, a junior at Central High School, plays in the high school orchestra and in her spare time studies with the world renowned violinist, Joseph Gingold, at Indiana University. Gingold's influence was clear in Miss Kang's performance. Her tone is dark and resonant, her technique well developed, and her bowing articulate and smooth. Her interpretation of some of the most demanding works in the repertoire was quite sophisticated. If one were to have thought this petite and demure seventeen year old "a shrinking violet," any notions were quickly dispelled as she "roared through" her opening work, Beethoven's "Sonata No. 8 in G major." The "Hebrew Melody" of Joseph Achron and the more famous "La Capricieuse" of Edward Elgar received similar, elegant treatment.

It was the "Concerto in A Major" of Karl Goldmark, however, which was the more impressive performance of the day. The work is a "tour de force" of the repertoire and one which is not performed often, especially by one so young. While Tarina will need a few more year of living with this piece to be its master, it was quite clear that she had an incipient grasp of the meaning of the work and good control over the myriad number of technical difficulties which the work presents.

Mention must also be made of Tarina's able and apt accompanist, and talented musical product of Cape Girardeau, also, Anja Kim. Between the two of them, they provided the appreciative audience with an afternoon of music that none shall soon forget and with a verification that music education in America is as good as in any place in the world!