In Flammen

Isang Yun was a Korean-born composer who made his later career in Germany. Yun's primary musical concern was the development of Korean music by the means of Western avantgarde music. After experimenting with 12-tone techniques Yun developed his own musical personality in his works of the early 1960s, post-serialistic "sound compositions". Yun's music employed techniques associated with traditional Korean music, such as glissandi, pizzicati, portamenti, vibrati, and above all a very rich vocabulary of ornaments. Essential is the presence of multiple-melodic lines, which Yun called "Haupttöne" ("central" or "main tones")…..

Impressionistic, jazzy, expressionistic, and composed by a Jewish Communist in l932, Flammen didn't stand a chance with the Nazis. But it's a marvelous work—inventive, entertaining, possibly unique. The libretto is only 38 pages long; more than a third of the music is orchestral. Don Juan is at the opera's center, but here he is condemned to passion and life—he can find no eternal rest. He travels from time to time and place to place; his conquests give him no joy despite the fact that he wreaks havoc wherever he goes. (…) John Mauceri leads a tight, riveting performance, and Decca allows us to hear this hallucinatory score in all its glory.

— Robert Levine, ClassicsToday.com