Guests at the Houston Symphony’s stunning performance of Mozart’s Requiem latest Sun were treated to the amusing sight of Yoonshin Song exchanging a fist-bump with Itzhak Perlman, the iconic violinist currently serving as the orchestra’s artistic partner (and, on Sunday, conductor). Never let it be said the position of concertmaster comes without perks. Song officially took over the work at the start of the 2019-2020 season, following seven years with the Detroit Symphony. The native of Seoul, S Korea, takes her role as liaison between the conductor and the other musicians onstage seriously.
“I hope it’s a excellent bridge,” she says. In this environment, communication is paramount. Particularly in chamber music, gestures as tiny as a nod of Song’s head or the angle of her bow can relay vital information about the character of the piece to her colleagues. Luckily, they’re so conditioned to working together that “actually, most of time they don’t have to verbally ask,” she says. Song says she finds it “refreshing” working with the many visitor conductors who pass through Jones Hall, soaking up a wide variety of musical experiences. However, she’s also arrive to cost her working relationship with music director Juraj Valçuha, who's nearing the finish of his first season in Houston.
One of her most memorable performances below his baton so distant came in Feb with Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, which was already one of her favorites. “He’s a very charismatic boss and very serious musician, and he's a very wide spectrum on repertoire and deep understanding of music,” Song says. “It’s very necessary to me how much he cares,” she adds. “So distant I really perceive grateful to have him, and musically I am very satisfied. We're always looking forward to the following repertoire with him.”
On concert days, Song tries to sleep well the night before, avert junk food, and get a nap if she can. She’s not always successful, “but if you can obtain [maybe] twenty minutes, that’s good,” she laughs. This weekend she’ll discover herself in a unique position: with number conductor on the podium, she’ll lead the orchestra the stage through Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. one; Louise Farrenc’s Nonet; and Hadyn’s Symphony No. one hundred one in D Major, nicknamed “The Clock.” Born into a prominent French artistic family, Farrenc became the only 19th-century woman to keep a permanent faculty position (Prof of piano) at the Paris Conservatoire. Her Nonet premiered in one thousand eight hundred-fiftieth and will feature Song alongside eight of her fellow portion leaders, or principals: flutist Aralee Dorough, oboist Jonathan Fischer, clarinetist Tag Nuccio, hornist William VerMeulen, bassoonist Rian Craypo, violist Joan DerHovsepian, cellist Brinton Averil Smith, and double bassist Robin Kesselman.
The Nonet is seldom performed nowadays, so this will be Song’s first time through. “We will look how it goes,” she says, “but I've number worries beca we've really grand principals playing in this piece… it's a very well-written piece.” Mozart’s first violin concerto is likewise not as famous as his later ones. Song learned portion of it as a child, but this will also be her first time through the all thing — the latest of his five concerti she’ll complete. (“Now I've a full set, it feels like,” she says.) The composer was just seventeen when he wrote it, and his youthful exuberance translates easily to the score.
“This piece is full of joy and full of excitement, and then the second movement is so beautiful,” says Song. “But it’s tricky and very playful, just love Mozart himself, I guess.” The challenge for her, she continues, will be making a challenging piece sound effortless. Unlike other concertos, those of Mozart’s (even the early ones) can be singularly unforgiving. “Bach or Mozart or Schubert, it’s so — in a way — simple; and the player, sometimes you perceive like we're being naked,” she says. “You have to have everything.” After the Mozart, Song will turn her attention to Béla Bartok’s Violin Concerto No. two, which she'll carry out with Valçuha conducting in January two thousand twenty-four.
The two pieces could hardly be more different: the Mozart dates to one thousand seven hundred seventy-three, when Beethoven was a wee toddler. Bartok’s was written between one thousand nine hundred thirty-seven and one thousand nine hundred thirty-nine, when leading composers were in thrall to the controversial harmonic and structural innovations of Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and Alban Berg. The Bartok is also several minutes longer and, notes Song, requires a few months just to learn. But to attain true mastery, she smiles, “it’s never enough.”
