Season opening – Bomsori Kim, Yaroslav Shemet

Let’s get started! In this new artistic season, we want to surprise, inspire, and—above all—move you with the beauty of music once again. And we’ve prepared plenty of it for you, in all its many shades!

To kick things off, we invite you to the grand season opening at the Krakow Philharmonic. Joining us on stage will be Bomsori Kim, a phenomenal South Korean violinist, winner of the Henryk Wieniawski Competition, and a regular collaborator with Deutsche Grammophon. The concert will be conducted by Maestro Yaroslav Shemet, one of the most sought-after conductors in our country, about whom critics, enchanted by his talent, have written, among other things, that he “lives and breathes music.”

The evening will open with Ludwig van Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61. Its premiere in 1806 did not meet with much acclaim from the audience, and the piece itself remained relatively unknown for years. Today, it captivates not only with the grandeur of the solo part but, above all, with the extraordinary balance between virtuosic elements and symphonic form. The violin part constantly engages in dialogue with the orchestra, and Beethoven develops the thematic material with exceptional consistency, building tension through contrasts in texture, dynamics, and harmony.

The second half of the concert will feature Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy’s Symphony No. 4 in A major, Op. 90, “Italian.” The work was inspired by impressions from a stay in sunny Italy, which the composer visited during his travels across Europe in 1829–1831. Here, Mendelssohn draws on idioms characteristic of Italian dances, referring in particular to the Roman saltarello and the Neapolitan tarantella. The work as a whole combines classical clarity of form with Romantic richness and shifting moods.

‍