A SUNNY DISPOSITION

In the past few years, US violinist Esther Yoo has seen her career blossom as a soloist and chamber player. And despite the pandemic, she has seized every opportunity to grow as a musician, as she tells

JE WON KIM.

Esther Yoo is the model of a violin soloist in the modern age. Intelligent, articulate and self-possessed, she is so much more than a technical virtuoso. On stage she has won over audiences with her deeply felt performances; online she has acquired a devoted following of fans and would-be string players who rely on her lively social posts. Zooming from her temporary home in South Korea, she talks about the difficult year everyone has experienced, but she picks out some of the positive aspects of a post-pandemic world:

‘This could turn out to be an exciting time for the classical music world. We’ve been forced to stop being on autopilot and all of us – managers, labels, venues, promoters – have an opportunity to look at how to do things differently. As an artist I find it exciting that we can now choose and create a way forward, because we aren’t going back to how it was.’

Yoo has had plenty of time to reflect on the big things in life since March 2020, when the spread of Covid meant she was locked down with family in her parents’ home city, Seoul. For an artist whose entire life had revolved around travel, rehearsing and sharing music with colleagues and audiences, the sudden silence must have been devastating. ‘I had several months when I wasn’t performing and I missed making music and interacting with other musicians so much. When the news was so scary and sad, it felt very dark for us all because without music we had no outlet for our feelings.’

Finding the silver lining is one of Yoo’s great skills. ‘I try to project a lot of positivity, a mindset that I maintain for myself because I have experienced periods that have been quite dark and I have needed to find ways to overcome them. I always try to find solutions and ways to move forward instead of feeling bad for too long, because ultimately that doesn’t really get you anywhere.’ She’s just completed the first year of an MA in musical performance at the Royal College of Music in London, albeit online, and her favourite course so far has been performance psychology. She has used some of this new-found knowledge when working with students over the last year.

‘I see all the difficulties the new generation of musicians face, and many times it’s not even here [she mimes bowing]. It’s not instrument-related. A lot of it is here in the head, in the heart, in the spirit.

If I can help them with that, it changes so much more in their playing, in their communication and in their musicality.

Esther Yoo on stage with the KBS Symphony Orchestra and conductor Myung-Whun Chung at Seoul Arts Center in December 2020

KBS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

‘A lot of music education now is so focused on the instrument, on playing well, being technically perfect, and obviously that’s what audiences want to hear when they go to a concert,’ she continues. ‘But ultimately, as musicians, we want to experience art and music to feel something, and to have an emotional reaction, and that doesn’t come from being a robot with our instrument!’

Her own musical journey started in the US (where she was born in 1994), when her parents took four-yearold Yoo to recitals and orchestral concerts at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. She sat spellbound, listening to soloists such as Midori, Sarah Chang and Itzhak Perlman. ‘My first instrument was actually the piano, but after those recitals I decided that I wanted to take up the violin,’ she says. Once she started school, there came a point when she had to choose which instrument to focus on. ‘The violin was definitely the one I felt more comfortable with and I had a special connection with my violin teacher.

She didn’t just teach me the violin, she took care of me as if I were her own little daughter.’

When Yoo was six, her parents moved from New Jersey to Belgium for work purposes, and she attended the International School of Brussels. ‘My parents were very supportive and encouraging about my violin studies but they didn’t necessarily think I would pursue it as a career. They didn’t want me to stop my general education and I’m very grateful to them for that,’ she says. ‘I loved going to school, I loved my friends and my teachers and I was a pretty good student. I’m happy to have grown up not just focused on music but to have other interests and friends who know absolutely nothing about music!’ Juggling schoolwork, social life and advanced violin studies and performances was a challenge, but Yoo devised ways of coping. ‘I had to plan every day meticulously to give time for each of these things. I learnt to prepare ahead of time, to know exactly what I was doing when, and also to decide what I was capable of doing if I pushed myself, and what was not realistic.’

Even though her life didn’t revolve exclusively around the violin, Yoo was among the top prizewinners in a series of major violin competitions at an astonishingly young age – the junior Wieniawski competition at 12 (first prize), the Sibelius at 16, and the Queen Elisabeth at 17. She doesn’t remember being daunted by these occasions: ‘I was so young at the time, my thinking was, “Now is a good time for me to learn this repertoire and put myself through this process.” I noticed that I grew so much after every competition, technically, musically and mentally, and I felt it was great to have this within me for later, because I knew that I would want to have a career as an artist.’ She still laughs to think of the crazy year when she went to the Queen Elisabeth Competition, won a prize and two weeks later was dancing at her senior prom. ‘It was like two different worlds!’

‘I’M HAPPY TO HAVE GROWN UP WITH OTHER INTERESTS, AND FRIENDS WHO KNOW ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT MUSIC!’

Yoo studied in Brussels and Germany with, among others, Zakhar Bron, Ana Chumachenco, Augustin Dumay and Leonid Kerbel. In 2014 she joined the BBC’s New Generation Artists scheme and moved to London. ‘It’s one of the greatest memories I have of my early career – being in a programme with fellow young musicians and being able to collaborate, and at that age to have recording experience not just in any studio but at BBC Radio 3!’ She met cellist Narek Hakhnazaryan and pianist Zhang Zuo (aka Zee Zee) on the scheme in 2015 and they got on so well that they founded the ZEN Trio. ‘We’re first and foremost friends – we’re very different personalities, but somehow it works,’ says Yoo. ‘Although each of us is an independent soloist, chamber music is so important to us: we make time to tour and record, and we learn so much from each other.’

IN-HO JUNG.

Yoo, aged five, with her violin

ESTHER YOO

Main and inset Recording the soundtrack for On Chesil Beach with composer Dan Jones at Abbey Road Studios, London, in 2018

The trio recorded their first disc – of Brahms and Dvořák piano trios – for Deutsche Grammophon in 2016 after touring in Europe and China. They went on their first North American tour in 2019, later going into the studio to record a programme of Russian and Armenian music, including Shostakovich’s Second Piano Trio and Babadjanian’s Piano Trio in F sharp minor. Happily, they managed to complete the recording and editing before lockdown and it was released in October 2020 as Burning through the Cold. A brief film of the session shows the trio laughing between takes, teasing each other and exchanging friendly critiques. An instant later they plunge back into the gloomy intensity of the Shostakovich trio, and one is struck by the sheer brilliance of these young artists.

With so much competition in the field, it’s a tribute to Yoo’s special combination of qualities that orchestras all over the world want to work with her. Reviews for her concerts and recordings range from admiring to ecstatic, singling out her dark, aristocratic tone, her nuanced dynamics, her sensitivity and the technical prowess which never lets virtuosity outshine the music. She made her first recording for DG in 2013–14, when she played Sibelius’s Violin Concerto with Vladimir Ashkenazy and the Philharmonia; they went on to record the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto together in 2016. ‘It was a relationship that built over years,’says Yoo. ‘Maestro Ashkenazy was very much a mentor to me, not just a recording partner. Musically, having that guidance was so important. Obviously, I had an idea of what I wanted to do with the pieces, but he has tremendous knowledge, especially of his favourite composer, Tchaikovsky, and I enjoyed learning from him. He’s very understanding and supportive of the soloists, especially young ones, that he works with.’ The maestro himself has warm words to say about their collaboration: ‘Making music with Esther has always been a pleasure for me. She is a very gifted and talented violinist, and she is able to bring out the inherent, and natural, beauty of the music she plays. She is a true artist, and I wish her a long and fruitful career.’

‘WE PRESENT OURSELVES IN THE BEST WAY POSSIBLE ON STAGE, BUT SO MUCH GOES ON BEHIND THE SCENES – IT TAKES A TOLL ON YOUR BODY AND YOUR MENTAL STATE’

Touring to Korea and China with the Philharmonia, Yoo found her musical horizons broadened by principal conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen. ‘He introduced me to new realms of sound I didn’t imagine were possible. I love his music and I hope some day to play his Violin Concerto.’ In 2018 the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO) appointed her as its inaugural artist-in-residence. The same year, she was asked to record the soundtrack for a film of Ian McEwan’s novella On Chesil Beach, where her violin represented the main character, Florence, in Dan Jones’s score. ‘It’s one of the projects I am most proud of and that I feel I learnt a tremendous amount from,’ she says.

PIETER PEETERS

‘Recording at Abbey Road Studios was an amazing experience in itself, but to study the essential relationship between film and music, to be involved in the inner workings of the film making process and to play a small part within a very grand team of professionals was inspiring and motivating.’ Also that year, Classic FM chose her as one of its top 30 musicians under 30; and in January last year, US radio station WQXR tipped her as one to watch in 2020.

Yoo’s schedule for 2020 included more debuts, an Asian tour with the ZEN Trio and a recording of Bruch and Barber violin concertos with the RPO and Yu Long for DG. She got as far as playing Bruch’s First Concerto with BBC National Orchestra of Wales in Cardiff in February and the Tchaikovsky with the RPO and Thierry Fischer in London in early March, and then everything stopped. Grounded in South Korea, which had fewer restrictions than European countries, she seized the opportunity to learn more about the culture and musical life of her parents’ country. She played with local and national orchestras, including the KBS Symphony Orchestra under Myung-Whun Chung, and made her debut with the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra and Wilson Ng. ‘That was not something I had planned: three concerts playing the Beethoven Violin Concerto, no less!’ She had to find a way to get back into performance mode without the normal lead-up of concerts. ‘In that process you learn a lot about yourself. You find new methods of working and you also gain more trust and faith in your capabilities. I think the past months have given me, and many others, inner strength.’

Yoo knows what it’s like to struggle with practice, to have doubts and to lose confidence, and she uses social media to share her hard-won knowledge. Her YouTube channel features, for example, practice-tip videos and analysis of ricochet in the cadenza of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, and via The Strad online she offered ‘Ten ways to motivate yourself to practise during lockdown’ (bit.ly/3wFL12A). She says, ‘There is a great hunger for educational tools in music, for insight into what it is to be a young classical musician. There are people who are starting to learn the violin in their forties, others who have been playing an instrument since they were a little kid. Not everyone has access to great teachers or to a music school, and if they are at home with their computer and feel like a small part of this world, that gives encouragement. I’m not just sharing my knowledge, it’s two-way communication and it’s ongoing.’

She wants to dispel the mystique of the international concert career, too. ‘We go on stage and present ourselves in the best way possible, but there’s so much that goes on behind the scenes – the emotional hardship of travelling all the time, which takes a toll on your body and your mental state. I try to share my journey so that people are aware of the challenges, not just the fancy end product.’ But it’s the life she knows and – mostly – loves. ‘I’m dying to get back on a plane, to travel and perform in different places and make music with friends again. But I suddenly realised, when I wasn’t able to travel last year, that I had time to think, to reflect and make plans calmly, without having to give answers immediately or be tied to anything. In the future, I hope we will all feel able to demand the space we need to function at our ultimate level.’

Recording Burning through the Cold with the ZEN Trio in 2019

Yoo’s diary is a work in progress, but among other performances she will give a Wigmore Hall recital on 20 September, and will tour with the ZEN Trio in Asia and Europe in 2022. She has been rescheduled to record the Barber Concerto and Bruch’s First with the RPO in November 2021. This past year has led her to re-examine the future of music performance. ‘As we look towards the unknowns of post-Covid life with both anxiety and great excitement, I’m eager to explore different formats and environments of music making, outside the traditional classical concert context.’ And what might this look like? ‘It could involve more film music, eccentric collaborations or a diverse choice of repertoire. After such a long period of confining our artistic expression, I believe now is a time when we should really dare to unleash our creativity.’

Along with performances, projects and finishing her MA, perhaps Yoo could add another string to her bow – that of motivational speaker!