Mountain garden in Daegu sets its sights on a Lucerne-style festival, one edition at a time
DAEGU — On a Friday evening in September, the Korean National Symphony Orchestra traded the concert hall for a mountaintop in Gunwi County, Daegu.
Led by Adrien Perruchon, music director of the Bucheon Philharmonic Orchestra, the orchestra opened Beethoven's Symphony No. 6, the "Pastoral," as a half-moon hung to the audience's left.
When the music softened, the sound of insects and rustling leaves drifted in from the surrounding hills. Yet the orchestra itself sounded clear and focused, rare for an open-air concert.
The venue was built with music in mind. Symphony 6, the newest addition to Sayuwon — a sprawling mountain garden whose name evokes contemplation — is named after Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, and was purpose-built for outdoor concerts.
Some 400 spectators sat on wooden benches set into a grassy slope that forms a natural amphitheater designed to optimize the acoustics. Italian architect Andrea Liverani based the design on the concept of a "tent of steel and nature," folding weathering steel into an origami-like canopy. The structure was recently named a winner in the public spaces category of the 2026 International Architecture Awards.
By the time the orchestra finished Bizet’s Carmen Suite and two encores, the moon had moved to the right of the stage. The concert on Sept. 18 marked the opening of the inaugural Saya International Music Festival, a three-day event that ran through Sept. 20 with five performances.
Over the next two days, Symphony 6 hosted three more performances: "Love Songs," a program of Korean art songs and opera arias by bass Lim Chae-jun and soprano Cho Sun-hyung, who are married, and the world premiere of "Dance of Thought: This Way and That Way" by the Ahn Eun Me Company. The festival closed with "Opera Doppelganger: Verdi vs. Puccini," an concert featuring excerpts from Verdi's "La Traviata" and Puccini's "Madama Butterfly."
Saya is the ho, or traditional literary name, of Yoo Jae-sung, founder of Sayuwon. It combines the Chinese characters for "history" and "wilderness." Yoo, who led the Daegu-based steel company TC Taechang, began developing Sayuwon in the mid-2000s, and the garden opened to the public in 2021.
Admission to the garden is 50,000 won on weekdays and 69,000 won on weekends. Even so, Sayuwon has grown popular among architecture and landscape enthusiasts, including foreign visitors, said a Sayuwon staff member surnamed Kim, a certified professional landscape engineer who moved from Seoul to Daegu for the job.
"I was fascinated by this place and decided to come here," Kim told The Korea Herald on Sept. 18.
Getting there is becoming easier. Starting in October, a direct bus makes six round trips a day between Dongdaegu Station and Sayuwon, Kim added.
Slow by design
Symphony 6 is the newest structure in Sayuwon's 330,000 square meters. The garden's spaces were designed by four renowned architects: Seung H-Sang (15), Portuguese Pritzker Prize laureate Alvaro Siza (three), Choi Wook (one) and Liverani (three, including Symphony 6). Four landscape architects and designers — Jung Youngsun, Kawagishi Matsunobu, Kim Hyeonhee and Park Seungjin — blended the buildings into the mountain terrain.
Sayuwon's first space, Hyeonam, or "dark hermitage," designed by Seung, was completed in 2014.
Among the garden's best-known buildings is Soyoheon, designed by Siza. Its name comes from "Free and Easy Wandering," the opening chapter of the Taoist classic "Zhuangzi."
At the heart of Sayuwon is Pungseolgicheonnyeon, a grove of 108 quince trees, each 300 to 600 years old, planted along a valley. The name roughly means "a thousand years of wind and frost."
All of this reflects Yoo's long-held vision of bringing nature, architecture, food and art together in one place, said Jeong Gab-gyun, director of Sayuwon. Since opening, the garden has hosted small-scale concerts, usually at Sadam, a contemplative water garden and restaurant serving course meals, where audiences sit across a pond from the performers.
The inaugural music festival takes that a step further and builds on Yoo's long patronage of the arts. He has presented the Saya Traditional Korean Music Award every year for more than a decade, and about four years ago he launched the Saya Opera Award to discover and support opera singers.
"Humans who live 100 years are building a Sayuwon that will last 1,000 years," said Jeong. "That is Sayuwon's philosophy."
Although the lineup was mostly Korean, the word "international" signals where the festival hopes to go, he added.
"We want to take it in the direction of something like the Lucerne Festival," he said. "So from the very first edition, we had no choice but to call it an international music festival."
He said the festival would grow gradually, with at least five performances again next year. "Rather than overreaching from the start, we'll go step by step — to the fifth edition, the 10th, the 20th," he said, noting that the Lucerne Festival has more than 80 years of history.
gypark@heraldcorp.com
