Korean violinist’s attack on a coughing child spoils her anticipated return.

The much-anticipated return to the concert platform by violinist Kyung-Wha Chung has been overshadowed by an unfortunate incident involving a coughing child.

The Korean virtuoso was one of the highest-flying soloists of the 1970s and 80s and her recordings of mainstream concerto repertoire were eagerly collected. She was a noted chamber musician with partners including Radu Lupu and Krystian Zimerman and, along with her cellist sister Myung-Wha and her brother, pianist and conductor Myung-Whun, she was part of one of classical music’s most successful dynasties. But family life, followed by a performance related injury caused her to withdraw entirely from live performance.

Yesterday saw her first recital in 12 years in front of a substantial crowd at London’s Festival Hall. Starting with the Mozart G Major sonata K379, Chung appeared distracted and annoyed by the barrage of coughing that erupted at the conclusion of the first movement. Turning to the parents of a child a few rows from the stage, she allegedly declared: “don’t you think you should bring her when she’s a bit older?”

Cowed into silence, the audience sat in some degree of terror as Chung proceded to finish the Mozart and play Prokofiev’s demanding First Violin Sonata. “I can’t remember the first half of a concert ever feeling this tense,” declared Erica Jeal in her three-star Guardian review. “With one shrivelling put-down, a tetchy atmosphere turned toxic,” wrote Anna Picard reaching for the alliterations in The Times.

On his Slipped Disc website, Norman Lebrecht fulminated: “Such conduct is, in our view, unacceptable,” going on to suggest, “a performer should not respond to audience disruption, accidental or otherwise. A performer needs to be ‘in the zone’, in a separate space, to maintain an illusion of inspiration that is unaffected by the mundane.”

Not everyone was so damning, and some have disputed the actual words used, but few seem to have considered the stress the 66-year-old soloist must have been under given the publicity surrounding the event and the expectations based on her former reputation. A pity, because as anyone who has heard her sublime 1977 Frank Sonata with Lupu or her Walton and Stravinsky with Prévin will know that here was a very special artist indeed. As it is, the incident has dominated and almost certainly the event has coloured most reviews.