Five millennial pianists to present Beethoven piano concertos

Massimo Zanetti, third from left, artistic director of the Gyeonggi Philharmonic Orchestra (GPO), poses during a press conference, Seoul, Monday, with five pianists who would perform for the upcoming concert “Five for Five” where they and the GPO will present Beethoven's Piano concertos in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province from April 24 to May 8. From left are pianists Sun Youl, Park Jae-hong, Zanetti, Yoon A-in, Jung Ji-won and Lim Ju-hee. Courtesy of GPO

By Park Ji-won

Poster for the concert “Five for Five” / Courtesy of SPO

The Gyeonggi Philharmonic Orchestra (GPO) will perform all of Beethoven's piano concertos at art centers in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province from April 24 to May 8 featuring five rising star pianists.

In the concerts to mark the 250th anniversary of the composer's birth and titled “Five for Five,” Sun Youl, Jung Ji-won, Yoon A-in, Park Jae-hong and Lim Ju-hee will each play one of the Concertos No. 1 to 5. In addition, they will also perform Beethoven's “The Creatures of Prometheus” Op. 43, “Coriolan Overture” Op. 62, Romances Nos.1 and 2, and Symphony No. 7.

Unlike previous concerts here in which one pianist played all the pieces, the five young artists have joined hands to showcase the composer's masterpieces written across a thirty-year span.

“The specialty is the fact that five different people are playing it. Instead to be played by just one person we have five young wonderful promising pianists. It is to put all of them together in this special event,” Massimo Zanetti, chief conductor of the GPO said during a press conference held in Seoul, Monday.

Along with other orchestras last year, the GPO had to cancel a series of concerts to celebrate the composer's birth due to the pandemic. Amid the lack of performances, Zanetti focused on promoting the five pianists for this event, something he pledged when he also took the position as artistic director.

“I tried to get people who are Millennials born after the 2000s or close to it. Following this criteria, I thought about one of the main goals I announced already two-and-a-half years ago, when I started as music director of the orchestra. I said clearly one of my main goals was to promote very good young Korean artists. I thought this was the right chance to make it possible.”

He stressed that the five concertos show various stages in the life and the mental state of Beethoven.

“It is not just beautiful melodic lines. There is so much psychology. We all know they were written in a moment in which he was in trouble because he was deaf. All the psychological things that he had to stand. That is a lot of his private life hinted at inside this concert.”

“The piano concertos of Beethoven take up a period of his life that is practically 30 years. Starting from the first concerto he wrote, which he lost as we know, until the last piano concerto that he thought to compose around 1816, Beethoven was still thinking about writing a sixth piano concerto. Each concert has a very important peculiarity. That is what we are trying to show. There is no one more important and no one less important.”