The Suwon City Symphony Orchestra will present its 302nd subscription concert, a program that spans the poised elegance of the Classical era and the expansive narratives of 20th-century symphonic writing, on the 27th at the SK Suwon Artium.
The evening’s program features Mozart’s Overture to The Magic Flute, a Viola Concerto by Stamitz with violist Se-jun Kim as soloist, and Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10.
Hee-jun Choi will conduct. A graduate of the conducting program at the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music in Berlin—where he completed both a diploma and the advanced performance course—Choi won unanimous first place from the judges at a nationwide German conservatory conducting competition and took first prize at the Bad Homburg Conducting Competition.
He later gave the world premiere of Jörn Arnecke’s Drei Helden (Three Heroes) at the Rheinsberg Palace Opera to critical acclaim, and he is a recipient of the 41st Nanpa Music Award.
In the first half, the orchestra opens with the overture to Mozart’s The Magic Flute. The piece compresses the opera’s symbolism and dramatic tension into a compact form, alternating stately harmony with sprightly, lyrical lines.
That is followed by Stamitz’s Viola Concerto, a cornerstone of the Classical viola repertoire characterized by bright, graceful themes balanced against technically demanding solo passages.
Notably, the soloist is Se-jun Kim, the first Asian musician to serve as permanent principal violist of the North German Radio Symphony Orchestra in Hanover. A prizewinner in competitions including Hindemith and the Tokyo International, Kim is known on the international stage for his warm, resonant tone and refined expressive sensibility.
In the second half, the orchestra performs Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10 (1953). Widely regarded as one of the composer’s signature works, it navigates the tensions of its historical moment while asserting Shostakovich’s artistic identity—moving from a long-breathed, lyrical first movement to an explosive, driving second, through a dreamlike third, and into a finale that reveals the composer’s 'DSCH' motif, his musical monogram.
The concert begins at 7:30 p.m. on the 27th in the SK Suwon Artium Grand Theater.
/Jihye Park, reporter pjh@incheonilbo.com
