Yoonsa ’25 shares their musical talent with a broad audience while focusing on the universal concept of love.
From late June to early August, I attended the Bowdoin International Music Festival to further my studies in viola performance and chamber music. While this grant did not specifically contribute to my time there, I look forward to applying my experiences collaborating with fellow musicians and performing in community concerts to my next Tutti concert in late August.
At Bowdoin, there are three distinct types of performances offered to festival students: studio classes, community concerts, and Young Artists Concerts. Studio classes consist of informal performances on works in progress, and Young Artists Concerts are polished, professional performances in the recital hall. Community concerts lay in the gray area between the two. Often, they are overlooked as a “practice performance” for a more formal concert, but community concerts can contribute significantly in understanding the context surrounding a piece before a high-stakes performance.
For a performance to resonate with an audience mostly unfamiliar with classical music, it is essential to have a point of connection. One violinist introduced his piece with a seemingly unrelated question: “Do any of you use a laundry machine?”. Some washing machines companies use the main theme of the fourth movement of Schubert’s Trout Quintet to signal a completed cycle. A relatable touchstone such as a laundry machine provides a much more engaging experience instead of listing the names of significant composers and pieces in the classical music canon. That, to an ordinary audience, is pretty much meaningless.
I connected both of my community concert performances to another universal concept: love. One piece was written by Alexander Borodin as an anniversary gift to the composer’s wife, as demonstrated by the loving and poignant melody exchanged between the first violin and cello. Although the composer has risen in fame to the classical musical canon, he is actually commemorated as a prolific chemist in monuments. The second piece was written by a prodigious eighteen-year-old Mendelssohn falling in love twice: first, with the late Beethoven String Quartets in their final year of being in print, and second, with a girl. He cites the opening theme of a song he previously composed with the repeated motif of “Ist est wahr?” (“Is it true?”). After a brief introduction, the movement cascades into a turbulent, dramatic exploration of yearning and conflict. Through my introductions, I gained a significantly more nuanced understanding of the pieces and was able to incorporate the knowledge into my performances.
As I prepare for my next Tutti concert on August 31st, I plan to craft my introductions with more intention and care while encouraging the younger performers to do the same. I hope that both the audience and performers will be able to feel a stronger sense of unity and purpose during each concert, and experience the joy it is to find a meaningful connection between the performer, the music, and the audience.