Sala: Seoul Arts Center: Concert Hall

Two contemporary works pave the way for a big Tchaikovsky pairing at the Seoul Arts Center, with Yekwon Sunwoo joining the Hong Kong Philharmonic for the First Piano Concerto. 

The Seoul Philharmonic preview their forthcoming US-tour programme, featuring Bomsori Kim playing Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto. 

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.