The festival will begin with the performance of Soyoung Yoon, the prize-winner of the 2011 Wieniawski Violin Competition, one of the most important violin competitions. The soloist will play the Violin Concerto in D minor by Jean Sibelius and, to add to the atmospheric mood of Valentine’s Day, the overture-fantasy to “Romeo and Juliet” by Pyotr Tchaikovsky. The Toruń Symphony Orchestra will play under the baton of maestro Mirosław Jacek Błaszczyk, the artistic director of the festival and a member of the jury of the violin competition.

Artists:
Soyoung Yoon - violin
Mirosław Jacek Błaszczyk - conductor
Toruń Symphony Orchestra
Urszula Guźlecka - introduction

Programme:
L. van Beethoven - Overture Egmont op. 84
P. Czajkowski - The Overture-Fantasy Romeo and Juliet
J. Sibelius - The Violin Concerto in D minor

Beethoven was overjoyed to write the music to Goethe’s tragedy Egmont. He greatly admired the talent of the great German poet and that particular literary work. Out of the ten pieces of this composition, three deserve special mention: The song of Klärchen and Larghetto, as well as the closing part, composed at Goethe’s behest, the so-called Symphony of victory. The overture lives on as a musical piece on its own and is played as such; the forbidding and jarring chords of the introduction and the subtle and emotional Allegro extol the virtue of the valiant hero who dies for the freedom of his people.

Tchaikovsky’s music is infused with poetic expression and melancholic lyricism. The composer found also in Shakespeare a distinctive romantic tone, one of great passion and tragedy, although he was hard put to write the piece: its original version was not well-received and only due to the later revisions (in 1870 and 1880) did the work take its shape as we know it today. The overture enchants with its well-rounded themes and the powerful narration, which recounts the tale of the two feuding families as they gradually destroy the passionate love in spite of its idyllic beginnings.

Written in 1903 and revised two years later, the concert epitomizes the characteristic style of Sibelius. The composer proposed a lavish artistic reworking of Finnish folk music motifs and, in doing so, managed to combine the broad rhapsodic form with a melancholic lyricism. The concert became famous on account of the scintillating solo part (Sibelius was an eminent violinist himself) and the crystal-clear accompaniment serving as a well-crafted background.

The victory in the 2011 Wieniawski International Violin Competition in Poznań ushered Soyoung Yoon into a distinguished international career. Since then the violinist has been touring the world with her recitals and concerts accompanied by magnificent orchestras. She started learning the violin at the age of five and soon became a star in her native South Korea. Having won several country-wide competitions, including that of Chunchu and Seoul, she received the Unpa Music Award. A globally acclaimed violinist, she enchants the public and musicians with her mesmerizing performances. Her talent has been appreciated at some of the most renowned violin competitions around the world, including the Indianapolis International Violin Competition (2010), the Queen Elizabeth Competition in Brussels (2009) and the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow (2007). Soyoung Yoon was awarded the first prize in the 2002 Yehudi Menuhin International Violin Competition. The following year saw her triumph at the Kulenkampff Competition in Cologne, where she was the youngest participant to receive the first prize in the competition’s history. In 2003 she was a finalist in the international competition in Hanover and in 2005 won the Tibor Varga Competition, where she was also awarded the Bartók Prize. The Korean Musical Society named her the best debut. The year 2007 brought her the Grand Prix at the David Oistrakh Competition together with the Virtuoso Special Prize and the Lutosławski Society Special Prize.
She has been recording for the radio and television and appeared in the documentary program of the WDR television channel ‘Der Weg des Meistergeiger’.
She plays a J. B. Guadagnini ‘ex-Bückeburg’ violin of 1773.

The concert will be held under the patronage of Mr Tadeusz Pająk, the Honorary Consul of Finland in Toruń.