Sala: Seoul Arts Center: Concert Hall

An evening at the Seoul Arts Center in which clarity matters as much as volume and the most telling virtuosity comes from a refusal to grandstand.

After Jan Lisiecki clarifies the architecture of Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto, Renes' Mahler felt like a letter written in the dark. 

From the very first bars of Britten’s Violin Concerto, Augustin Hadelich impresses in Britten's Violin Concerto, yet Jaap van Zweden's Brahms 4 appears misaligned. 

In Yunchan Lim’s hands the score to Rachmaninov's Fourth Piano Concerto emerges as a small revelation, conspicuously succeeding where so many others have floundered. 

Tradition reborn with thrilling clarity: Jakub Hrůša’s Bambergers light up Seoul: Wagner’s shimmering overture, Bomsori Kim’s impassioned Bruch, and a lucid yet explosive Beethoven Seventh. 

By the close of the performance, one sensed that the audience’s exhilaration stemmed less from polished execution and more from a shared immersion in the music’s dramatic arc—elements that lingered as the defining memory of this eventful evening.

At the Seoul Arts Center, the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra achieves a luminous balance of historically informed insight and modern orchestral splendour, delivering performances that feel at once deeply rooted and thrillingly alive.

Myung-whun Chung and the KBS Symphony Orchestra tackle Mahler’s monumental Resurrection Symphony at the Seoul Arts Center.