BBC Philharmonic Returns to Korea After 11 Years With Violinist Bomsori Kim

The BBC Philharmonic, one of the orchestras run by Britain's BBC, will visit South Korea for the first time in 11 years. Chief Conductor John Storgards will take the podium, joined by violinist Bomsori Kim, who has recently performed at the Salzburg Festival and on the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra's European tour.

The orchestra will perform at 5 p.m. on December 12 at the Seoul Arts Center Concert Hall. One of five orchestras operated by the BBC, the BBC Philharmonic is the resident orchestra at Manchester's Bridgewater Hall and has built an active record of broadcasts, recordings and premieres of new works. It also appears regularly as a principal orchestra at the BBC Proms, the world-renowned classical music festival. This will be its first Korean visit since 2015.

Storgards, a Finnish conductor, leads both the BBC Philharmonic and the Turku Philharmonic. He began his career as a violinist and served as concertmaster of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra before expanding into conducting. His repertoire ranges from Nordic works by Sibelius and Nielsen to Beethoven, Brahms and Bruckner, as well as contemporary music. With the BBC Philharmonic, he has recorded the complete symphonies of Sibelius and Nielsen and is currently working on a complete cycle of Shostakovich symphonies. Storgards visited Korea in 2019 as a guest conductor of the Seoul Philharmonic, but this marks the first time leading a foreign orchestra here.

Kim will perform Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto in D major. She and the BBC Philharmonic previously worked together in 2023, when she made her BBC Proms debut with Bruch's Violin Concerto. Kim has recently received a string of invitations to major music festivals including the Salzburg Festival, and last month she joined the Seoul Philharmonic's European tour under Jaap van Zweden as a soloist.

The concert opens with Fanny Mendelssohn's Overture in C major, the only orchestral work left by the composer, who was the elder sister of Felix Mendelssohn. Kim then performs the Tchaikovsky concerto, a cornerstone of the violin repertoire that demands both dazzling technique and lyrical phrasing.

The second half features Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 in A major. Known as the "symphony of dance," the work is driven throughout by powerful rhythm and momentum. The second-movement Allegretto, in which melodies accumulate over a repeating rhythmic figure, and the headlong fourth movement are especially well known.

The visit is a Korea-only tour. After the Seoul concert, the orchestra will perform on December 15 at the Nakdong Art Center in Busan and on December 16 at the Daegu Concert House. Advance ticket sales for the Seoul concert open at 2 p.m. on September 9 for paying members of the Seoul Arts Center, with general sales starting at 2 p.m. on September 10. Seoul tickets are priced at 240,000 won for R seats, 180,000 won for S seats, 120,000 won for A seats and 80,000 won for B seats.