SEOGNAM PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA, NANSE GUM (conductor), MARIA SOLOZOBOVA (violin), MIN JIO (haegeum)

The Seongnam Philharmonic Orchestra was founded in 2003 with the artistic vision of providing its home city with a broad range of cultural events and becoming one of South Korea’s representative orchestras. Its artistic director and chief conductor is the highly experienced Nanse Gum, who graduated from the Berlin University of the Arts in 1977 and was the first Korean to win the Herbert von Karajan Young Conductors Award. Since his appointment as chief conductor in 2015, the orchestra has greatly expanded its annual calendar of concerts. The first part of the programme will consist of a performance of Benjamin Britten’s Simple Symphony,  based on eight themes the composer wrote as a boy. This will be followed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3,  nicknamed “Strasbourg”  because of allusions to a local dance in the third movement. The soloist will be Maria Solozobova, a violinist who has won praise for her combination of virtuosity and creative spontaneity. The soloist will be Min Jio, who frequently performs with specialised ensembles devoted to this traditional Korean string instrument, such as the Korean Haegeum Ensemble and the Haegeum Research Society. The evening will end with Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G minor,  a work in which we can hear the germ of a Beethovenian sense of fate.

Programme:
Benjamin Britten: Simple Symphony for String Orchestra, Op. 4
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Violin Concerto No. 3. in G major, K 216
***
Jung Jae-Min: Urban Arirang
Wolfgang Amadus Mozart: Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K 550