At Seoul Arts Center, the SAC Festival Orchestra closed its International Music Festival with Beethoven’s Piano Concerto no. 3 in C minor, Op. 37 and Mahler’s Symphony no. 1 in D major, “Titan”. In the Beethoven, Jan Lisiecki clarified the architecture; in the Mahler, Lawrence Renes seemed to be searching for it. The temperature contrast between the halves felt diagnostic of the festival’s present condition.
From the opening tutti of the Beethoven, Lisiecki chose transparency over fragrance. His entry was plain-spoken, the line articulated with consonants rather than smeared vowels; even at ppp the contour kept its spine. Rubato worked as punctuation at structural joints rather than as a sentimental handbrake. The pedal served harmonic legibility rather than cosmetic sheen, so inner voices read cleanly and the counterpoint registered. Renes kept the orchestral fabric breathable, letting the soloist’s grammar set the rhetoric.
There was a price for these gains. In the development, the admirable respect for the independence of each note sometimes partitioned tension into neat units instead of drawing one long arc; the drama accumulated, but in compartments, like letters tucked away in separate drawers. The cadenza, by contrast, sounded like a necessary consequence rather than an appended flourish.
In the Largo, Lisiecki’s long breath was most eloquent – the cantabile was deep yet unsentimental, with the middle parts speaking in their own detail. Yet Beethoven’s bold modulations registered as well-marked waypoints rather than inevitable crossroads, and harmonic stress seldom translated into psychological heat. The finale recovered buoyancy through springy rhythm and crisp offbeats. Trills were taut, octaves spoke cleanly, and the turn to C major registered as a release rather than a blaze. This was Beethoven argued from structure outward – persuasive, if guarded.
After the interval, Mahler’s First Symphony revealed both the limits and the promise of a pick-up festival orchestra. Renes favoured spacious basic tempi, giving phrases breathing room and choosing tidiness over risk. The introduction was carefully prepared: the muted strings’ sustained A glowed with no haze, and the distant cuckoo calls created real perspective. But as the movement unfolded, seams showed. Entries arrived fractionally late, tutti passages compressed under pressure, and the long-breathed line Mahler requires couldn’t quite hold.
There were clear strengths. Inner-brass chorales found a centre of gravity; the bass line was lucid in places; exposed violin passages offered striking unanimity of attack. The Ländler of the second movement provided the firmest footing—rustic swing with a Viennese tilt, a Gemütlichkeit earned rather than pasted on. The funeral march managed tempo with care but kept irony at arm’s length; klezmer-tinged asides brushed where they should have jabbed. In the Finale, the horns, heroic in intent, wavered intermittently and the climaxes, large in volume, failed to fuse into a single arc.
This Mahler felt like a letter written in the dark. Renes’ hand traced the remembered contours; the players knew the silhouette he sought. In daylight, however, the page showed overlapping ink and occasional tremors. Sentences that likely looked immaculate in draft betrayed their crossings when brought to light.
Now in its fifth year, the SAC International Music Festival, founded in 2021 to restore a stage to musicians displaced by the pandemic, has grown in scale without shedding the solidarity that gave rise to it. The standing ovation that closed the evening felt like more than approval of the programme; it read as gratitude, a thank-you for the hard seasons weathered by players and listeners together. The night was not flawless, nor did it need to be. That music can still be made and shared – in this hall, by these hands, before these ears – may be the festival’s most durable achievement and the value it has most carefully guarded.
