Sala: Lotte Concert Hall, Seoul

In Myung-whun Chung’s first concert as the orchestra’s tenth Music Director, Leonidas Kavakos’ account of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto is built on exposure rather than varnish. 

In a notoriously tricky acoustic, the Czech Philharmonic and Semyon Bychkov make the Lotte Concert hall feel like theirs in a programme of Dvořák and Tchaikovsky.

As a pre‑tour snapshot, this concert proves was unambiguous: an orchestra intent on renewing the canon in the language of now rather than sealing it behind glass. 

Propulsive Prokofiev from pianist Dmitry Shishkin between Ravel’s hypnotic minimalism and Schoenberg’s late-Romantic complexity. 

Fragmentation to ritual: this was no Rite of Spring of two halves but a single, vast architectural crescendo.

A sumptuous exploration of Saint-Saëns at Lotte Concert Hall in a programme forming a cohesive tapestry woven from the composer’s fascination with colour, all traced back to a distinctly Parisian sensibility. 

Like the grainy intensity of a high-contrast black-and-white photograph, these rugged edges accentuated Mahler’s expressive extremes, reaffirming the conductor’s innate flair for crafting a grand aesthetic narrative within the symphony’s expansive architecture.