Soovin Kim, violin, December 8, 2023

José García-León, Dean

faculty artist series

Soovin Kim, violin Friday, December 8, 2023 | 7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall

Niccolò Paganini 1782–1840

24 Caprices for Solo Violin, Op. 1 I. Andante II. Moderato III. Sostenuto – Presto IV. Maestoso V. Agitato pause VI. VII. VIII. IX. X. XI. XII.

Lento Posato Maestoso Allegretto Vivace Andante – Presto Allegro

intermission

Program cont.

Paganini

24 Caprices for Solo Violin, Op. 1 XIII. Allegro XIV. Moderato XV. Posato XVI. Presto XVII. Sostenuto – Andante XVIII. Corrente – Allegro pause XIX. XX. XXI. XXII. XXIII. XXIV.

Lento – Allegro assai Allegretto Amoroso – Presto Marcato Posato Tema con variazioni

As a courtesy to others, please silence all devices. Photography and recording of any kind is strictly prohibited. Please do not leave the hall during musical selections. Thank you.

Artist Profile Soovin Kim, violin Violinist Soovin Kim has performed with many of the major orchestras in the United States and abroad, presented recitals on the world’s most celebrated stages, and released recordings on the Koch Discover International, Delos, Azica Records, and Stomp/EMI (Korea) labels.

He has worked and collaborated with such revered chamber musicians as Jeremy Denk and Mitsuko Uchida and for two decades was the first violinist in the Johannes String Quartet. Today, Kim is a member of the Chien-Kim-Watkins Trio with his wife, pianist Gloria Chien, and YSM faculty cellist Paul Watkins.

Kim won first prize at the 1996 Paganini International Violin Competition and has received the prestigious Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award, an Avery Fisher Career Grant, and a Henryk Szeryng Foundation Career Award. He received the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s 2021 Award for Extraordinary Service to Chamber Music.

Kim serves as Visiting Professor in the Practice of Violin at the Yale School of Music, where he teaches individual students, coaches chamber music ensembles, and presents a master class each semester. Kim previously served on the faculty of the New England Conservatory and the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University. He has also served as Lecturer/Artist-inResidence and Assistant Professor at Stony Brook University and as an international scholar at Kyung Hee University in Seoul. He is the Artistic

Director of Chamber Music Northwest and the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival, which he founded, and maintains a relationship with the Marlboro Music Festival, with which he has performed on a dozen national tours over the course of nearly 15 years.

Kim earned his bachelor of music degree from the Curtis Institute of Music and studied before that at the Cleveland Institute of Music.

Upcoming Events at YSM dec 10

Paul Watkins, cello & Boris Berman, piano Faculty Artist Series 3 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall Free admission

dec 11

Tuba Studio Recital YSM Ensembles 4:30 p.m. | Sudler Recital Hall Free admission

dec 12

Guitar Chamber Music YSM Ensembles 7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall Free admission

dec 13

Lunchtime Chamber Music 12:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall Free admission

dec 13

Wei-Yi Yang, piano Horowitz Piano Series 7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall Tickets start at $17, Yale faculty/staff start at $12, Students start at $8

dec 14

Bach, Bassoons, and the Beatles YSM Ensembles 7:30 p.m. | Sudler Recital Hall Free admission

yale school of music box office Sprague Memorial Hall, 470 College Street New Haven, CT 06511 203 432–4158 | music-tickets.yale.edu

Connect with us yale.music

yalemusic

@yalemusic

YaleSchoolofMusicOfficial

If you do not intend to save your program, please recycle it in the baskets at the exit doors.

Soovin Kim, violin December 8, 2023 | 7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall

Program Note: “To the Artists” Note by the performer All but the freakishly talented and masochistic violin students fear and loathe the assignment of learning a piece by Niccolò Paganini. I was delighted to join this majority in an outcry against against his finger-twisting passages. Was he such a sadist that he reveled in the thought of torturing centuries of young violinists to come? Yet I knew that a daily diet of the Capricci was good for me; it would ultimately pay dividends in giving me the tools to play other more satisfying pieces.

So during my early Paganini-learning years, he and I had a complicated relationship.

Our relationship took a sudden turn on my first trip to Europe at age 20. It was to Genoa, Italy, the birthplace of Niccolò Paganini. I was competing in the Paganini international competition, an unabashed two-week celebration of his life.

Seeing Paganini cast in the role of hero rather than villain on his home turf, I began to look at his music through a new lens. I took notice of what he created rather than focusing on my own playing travails. While I walked Genoa’s narrow vicoli, I could imagine young Paganini running through the streets. Just as I did with Bach, Beethoven, Schumann, and Brahms, I began to try to look at Paganini’s music through his eyes rather than my own. As I listened to a slew of competition violinists playing Paganini caprices, variations, and concertos, I began to appreciate his operatic soul: the golden tenor arias of the violin’s middle register, the soaring soprano lines of the violin’s E string, the dramatic recitatives.

As for those famously brilliant arpeggios and double-stops canvassing the entire range of the instrument, I realized that they were the violin’s depiction of the ultimate coloratura soprano.

My growing admiration for Niccolò was sealed when I was given the chance to play his famous Guarneri del Gesù violin, Il Cannone, the instrument he bequeathed to his birth city.

The violin was entombed in a vault that required two separate keys worn around the necks of two different officials. Police with machine guns stood guard in the corner keeping a watchful eye on me! As the vault door swung open my heart skipped a beat – not from the motion of one of the guns – but upon seeing the instrument that forever changed music history. I swore that I caught a whiff of Paganini from the air that blew across my face from within the vault. For the next several days I spent a few hours drawing out and absorbing Paganini’s spirit from the depths of his powerful instrument.

The time I spent in Genoa fueled me with the inspiration to look at his 24 Capricci in a new light. Each is a simple (not easy!) gem that is either based on a single musical idea or two ideas in contrasting sections. The two exceptions to this are No. 9, which is a rondo, and No. 24, which is a theme and variations. The music in the Capricci covers the entire range of Paganini’s dramatic expression: fiendishly virtuosic, heoric, playful, passionately singing, and melancholy. Paganini loved to imitate other instruments and sounds, and here we find love duets, horn trios, bagpipe drones, and ghostly whistling.

He did not invent all of the various virtuosic techniques that he used throughout the Capricci, but no violinist before him incorporated these sounds so elaborately and fluently into their musical language. Paganini created the Violin Bible for all future violinists and composers.

Most of Paganini’s compositions were written as vehicles for his own performances, but there is no evidence that he ever performed the Capricci. Despite his legendary status as one of the greatest and most popular performers in history, his greatest legacy was composed simply for posterity. It is fitting that he added the poignant inscription on the cover of the manuscript: “Dedicati agli Artisti” (Dedicated to the Artists).