Violinist Esther Yoo attracts global attention

Korean-American violinist Esther Yoo has been invited to the BBC Proms, one of the global classical music festivals to be held in the U.K. next month, as the only ethnic Korean. She will perform twice with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra including Vaughan Williams’s “The Lark Ascending.”

This reporter met the violinist who came to Korea for performance in downtown Seoul on Friday.

“There are limits in communicating with the public just through classical music,” she said. “I want to make people feel more interesting and fun about classical music off the stage.”

For this, the 21-year-old violinist posts a wide range of content ranging from her rehearsal and performance videos and her hobbies of cooking and travelling on social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and YouTube. You can search her with “EstherYooViolin" at YouTube.

“When I released my first album (Sibelius and Glazunov Concertos) in October last year, I made two videos. I talked about why I chose Sibelius Concerto and the way I learned it. My trip videos give a sort of background how I get on the stage,” she said.

Born in New Jersey, the U.S., she came to international attention as she won the First Prize in the Junior Section of the International Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition in 2006. She became the third prizewinner of the 10th International Sibelius Violin Competition in 2010 and the fourth in the Queen Elisabeth Competition in 2012. She has performed with renowned conductors such as Lorin Maazel and Vladimir Ashkenazy since she was a teenager.

She went to a public middle and high school, not an artist school. Despite her busy schedule, she was a straight-A student. She has more non-artist friends than artist friends. Though she thought about going to a law school, she decided to study in the Excellence Bachelor Programme at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich to learn more about music.

“My parents said that I can play music for my life but there is timing in studying. It was challenging to balance both studying and music, though," she said. "I learned many things other than music, which eventually was helpful to music.”

김동욱 기자creating@donga.com