This article contains mild spoilers.
Lead cast: Lee Young-ae, Lee Moo-saeng, Kim Young-jae
Latest Nielsen rating: 4.9 per cent
“Lee Young-ae plays a brilliant and frosty conductor” – this promise alone was reason enough for us to tune into the classical-music-themed drama Maestra: Strings of Truth.
As renowned orchestra conductor Cha Se-eum, Lee does her part to deliver on that promise with a sharp and steely-eyed performance. Where the show falls short is the “conductor” part, which implies a tantalising behind-the-curtain look at the world of classical music.
Maestra is only too happy to peel back that curtain but only to gaze upon the sordid lives of the members of the struggling Hangang Philharmonic, as we are invited to wallow in the soapy excesses of their secret affairs and rivalries.
Maestra: Strings of Truth – Lee Young-ae leads music-themed K-drama
Maestra: Strings of Truth – Lee Young-ae leads music-themed K-drama
The classical music is there, but only in short and repeated bursts. Every couple of episodes the orchestra is preparing for a new performance and, as the strict and nitpicky Se-eum waves her wand in frustration, we hear the opening bars of only a handful of symphonies, among them Beethoven’s Fifth and Brahms’ First, over and over again.
It doesn’t take long for us to realise that Maestra is interested in classical music only in so far as it can heighten the show’s true designs: tawdry melodrama.
On paper it’s a compelling combination. The high-society trappings of the classical music world provide the ideal background for prime-time melodrama, while the brash and baroque swells of classical symphonies provide its ideal soundtrack.
The drama here revolves around the charismatic Se-eum, beginning with how she shakes things up at Hangang from the moment she arrives. A bitter love triangle soon takes over as investor Yoo Yeong-jae (Lee Moo-saeng), a beau from her youth, inserts himself back into her life.
Her professor husband, Kim Phil (Kim Young-jae), is caught having an affair with Hangang violinist Lee A-jin (Lee Si-won). Since the merest whiff of scandal could damage the fragile philharmonic, Se-eum at first tries to downplay the rumours, but her husband’s flagrant behaviour – not to mention A-jin’s pregnancy – soon puts her on the offensive.
Se-eum serves her husband with divorce papers but he doesn’t back down, threatening to expose that her mother Bae Jung-hwa (Ye Soo-jung) suffers from “Remington’s Disease” (an illness fabricated for the series that is similar to dementia, but blown up to soap-opera proportions). Since the disease is potentially hereditary, any mention of it could irrevocably damage Se-eum.
Among Se-eum’s other obstacles is the cocky young orchestra player Kim Bong-ju (Jin Ho-eun), who soon devolves into one of the most depressing stereotypes of the K-drama landscape: a deranged drug addict.
He staggers around with a ghostly complexion and laughs maniacally to himself while plotting diabolical revenge against those who he feels have wronged him. Extraordinarily, there are two other drug users in Se-eum’s orchestra, also young men, who she quickly fires.
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There has, however, been one stand-out moment in which Maestra has delivered the promised goods. The ominous opening bars of Brahms’s Symphony No. 1 play at the end of episode six as Se-eum sits at the ailing Jung-hwa’s side in her nursing home, hesitating to call for help when her mother experiences a diabolical fit.
The episode cuts to black and we are left wondering if Jung-hwa has died, and, more importantly, if her daughter has killed her.
Between these rare moments where the music and melodrama thrillingly combine, the show contents itself with garden-variety melodrama, much of it romantic. But beyond Se-eum and her two suitors, Maestra’s many supporting characters are given short shrift by a narrative that relegates them to the sidelines.
Case in point is violin prodigy Lee Luna (Hwang Bo-reum-byeol), who was introduced as a major character in the opening but has done precious little since, aside from having her violin smashed by Jung-hwa.
Se-eum is the only character that the story digs into, but take away Lee’s passionate performance and all that screen time doesn’t amount to much. She is a guarded character who stays cool under fire and has a knack for deflating scandals by getting ahead of them.
Yet the roots of her personality, her passion and her motivations for being a conductor remain a frustrating mystery.
Maestra: Strings of Truth is streaming on Disney+.