Korean pianist Yekwon Sunwoo was an undergrad at the Curtis Institute in 2009 when he first played Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto.
He’s dabbled with it a bit since, but nothing serious.
On Friday, he will take center stage at Tucson Music Hall and perform the work for the first time in concert as part of the Tucson Symphony Orchestra’s season opener.
The TSO is all about Beethoven this season and Sunwoo will be the first to tell you Beethoven’s Third is a great place to start.
“It takes you to another place. It’s refined and just out of this world,” he said during a phone call last week from Fort Worth, Texas, where he was performing three concerts last weekend. “I am totally excited to work with the symphony and I’m curious how it’s going to turn out.”
Ask him if he’s been cramming for the moment — practicing the piece until its embedded in his muscle memory — and he’ll be honest: Not so much.
“I do learn quite quickly and you have to handle a lot of repertoire at the same time; it’s the concert pianist’s life,” the 30-year-old South Korea native said. “I don’t practice that much.”
Sunwoo, who lives in Berlin, comes here two years after winning the Gold Medal at the prestigious Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. And while it’s his Tucson debut, it’s not the first time he’s performed with TSO Music Director José Luis Gomez. The pair shared a stage in Scotland when Gomez guest-conducted the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in 2017.
He said he jumped at the chance to reunite with Gomez, who he said “has so much energy and he really listens to the fine details of what we are doing so it is very comfortable playing for him.”
And the idea that this reunion is wrapped in Beethoven? Perfect.
Why he loves Beethoven?
“He was a great composer, a great pianist and a great improviser. He knew how to make the piano sing,” Sunwoo said. “As a musician, when I play Beethoven’s music, it just makes me feel centered. Even if you have a hectic life it makes you feel organized. His music is something that cannot be compared to any other.”
TSO is spending its 91st season focused on Beethoven in commemoration of the composer’s 250th birthday. On Friday’s season opener, Gomez also programmed Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, which TSO played for its first concert on Jan. 13, 1929.
