EIF: Clara-Jumi Kang

Queen’s Hall - 17/08/23

A world-class violinist plays to a half empty hall  

Sadly, this is the most appropriate headline I can choose for this morning’s Queens Hall concert. Those of us who were there were in awe of Clara~Jumi Kang’s performance; we gave her roars of appreciation and at the end a standing ovation, yet there were less than 400 of us there out of a 900 seat Queens Hall. Why was this? Maybe it’s because she was a lone performer, no chamber musicians or even a piano accompanist. Maybe it’s because of the programme: a long Bach work in the first half and an Ysaÿe second half is not the most obviously popular programme you might choose. Maybe it’s because of the cost, the Queens Hall tickets like the rest of the Festival prices have risen steeply in recent years and pensioner discounts have been removed to the disadvantage of the largest age group in attendance. The Festival have introduced last minute £10 tickets for low income groups but I checked with the box office and few were taken up today. Does all this matter? I think so. The Festival prides itself on being inclusive, yet by its own policies it is excluding some of its most faithful supporters.  Many of the concerts which in the past would have been sold out have had a lot of empty seats. Even the closing concert is not yet sold out, maybe because you have to pay up to £90 a seat. Of course in the past you could have the choice of staying at home and listening to the concert live on Radio 3, but sadly BBC cuts have removed this option and we don’t get Donald Macleod’s interesting introduction and interval discussions. BBC technicians are still there recording the concerts so you wonder how much they are saving? The technicians assured me the programmes will be broadcast sometime, maybe after the proms, maybe at Xmas, but on checking BBC programme schedules for the next 2 weeks it appears that if you missed this morning’s concert you won’t hear it any time soon!  

So what did you miss? Well, a consummate musician, who, though not yet a household name in most of the UK, is still well known amongst the musical elite playing some of the finest music ever written, namely the Bach Partita for Solo Violin No 2 in D Minor, followed in the second half by less well-known sonatas by Eugene-Auguste Ysaÿe, and one of his pupils, Nathan Milstein. She is a Korean musician, although born in Germany. This is important because the festival has received major South Korean funding and features a number of South Korean artists. In the case of Clara-Jumi Kang there is no doubt her talent and standing qualify her to be in the “biggest arts festival in the world.” Her parents are famous South Korean opera singers, so music was likely to be her life and she began to play the violin aged three. By five she was giving her first concert with the Hamburg Symphony; at the age of 7 she was the youngest ever student at the Juilliard in New York. She was very much a child prodigy and despite an early injury to her hand went on to win many prizes in competitions and in her adult life has become a sought after soloist all over the world. 

Clara appeared before us in a striking white dress, seriously picked up her violin and played, with no sheet music or tablet in sight for the whole concert. This music came from her memory and was perfectly delivered. Clara is now 36 so has no doubt been playing this music for some time. I remember meeting Yo-Yo Ma at a reception after he had played the Bach Cello Suites at Greyfriars. I said to him how impressed I was that he had played them all without the aid of sheet music; he laughed and said, “well I’ve been playing them since I was six!” Clara certainly didn’t need music, every note of the five movements of the Bach Partita No 2 was sensitively delivered, her face and body changed with the music, at times reflective, at times passionate and stormy, she was never boring to listen to or to watch. After the interval she played three very different sonatas from the great Belgian violinist and composer, Ysaye, who wrote these works in response to Bach’s sonatas and dedicated them to musical friends. They are obviously more modern than the Bach but not without melody or passion and ended with a Spanish theme in honour of a Spanish violinist, Manuel Quiroga, whose life was cut short in an accident. Finally she ended with a flourish, a work called ‘Paganiniana’ by Nathan Milstein, a famous violinist from Odessa and a pupil of Ysaye. He took one of the most famous violin works of all times, Paganini’s Caprice No 24, and did lots of variations on it. I’ve no doubt Clara added a few of her own she certainly played it with great vigour and fun. After a rapturous ovation she gave us an encore of a movement from another Bach Partita. It’s a pity there weren’t more of us there.