Eun Sun Kim Debuts with the Berliner Philharmoniker • April 2024
Berlin, Germany
Photo by Bettina Stös
Closing out a momentous 10-week string of orchestral engagements, leading concerts with Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, New York Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, London’s Philharmonia, Duisburger Philharmoniker, and Orquesta sinfónica de Barcelona, Eun Sun Kim makes her highly anticipated debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker. A number of outlets interviewed Kim about her trailblazing career, the coveted position of conducting the Berlin Philharmonic, and her upcoming return to Korea to conduct the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra.
See coverage in the Chosun Ilbo, Dong-a Ilbo, Hankook Ilbo, KBS Berlin, Kyughyang Shinmun, and Berlin Philharmonic Digital Concert Hall.
Critical Acclaim
Photo by Bettina Stös
“Kim makes her Berlin Philharmonic debut with burning energy. She conducts a daring program. It is clear that the concentrated female power will be victorious on this memorable evening. Kim is cool and dignified. She has enormous potential and we can be excited for the repeat performances. ‘Freedom,’ is the credo of this conductor, who is on the verge of an international career, and remains an ‘integral component’ of all live music, changing depending on the circumstances and mood.”
–Tagesspiegel
“Kim – small, friendly, unobtrusive. ‘Inconspicuous’ is meant in the best sense: Kim does nothing to distract from the music. She withdraws and only serves the orchestra. Her program selection is spectacular: Schönberg and Rachmaninoff in one evening? You have to trust her first. There's the heady, provocative Arnold Schönberg, and there is the supple Sergei Rachmaninoff, clichés that Kim counters with clear measures on Thursday evening: She smoothes it over. Schönberg, she supports with inviting warmth. And in return she lets the Rachmaninov play rather coolly and with a reduced color palette. So no Hollywood indulgences, no iconoclasm. No Russian melancholy either. Instead: the pure musical text. Kim shows how this music works. In the quiet passages, Kim becomes soft and elegant in her gestures. Otherwise, she leads the Philharmonic with great concentration and with quick, small arm movements. Kim tells the orchestra every gesture, she communicates all the cues with textbook-like clarity. It is impressive how confidently Kim masters her technical craft. And how willingly the orchestra follows. This can also be felt in Schönberg's ‘Erwartung’ in the first half of the concert. The orchestra is well-disposed towards her. And here again, Kim's clear, precise guidelines are of great benefit to everyone involved. Because this is a labyrinthine work, teeming with details. A work that urgently needs a strong, organizing hand – because otherwise one would hardly be able to follow this overflowing music. Kim also has extensive musical theater experience for the one-act play, and the philharmonic musicians offer a rollercoaster of emotions, they oscillate between illusion and reality. And still remain quite friendly and moderate.”
–Berliner Morgenpost
“Rachmaninoff’s Third is clearly music Kim appreciates on an emotional level as well as a symphonic one, and the Berliners relished Rachmaninov’s sophisticated scoring with virtuosity. Kim was persuasively flexible with the first movement’s second subject, finding romance while making it a part of the whole, then charting to anguished climaxes with surety, the lingering envoi setting up nicely the fond remembrances of the slow movement, offset by the fast and brilliant middle section, its particulars closely observed by Kim. She was articulate with the Finale, unifying its episodes without restricting them, the fugue included, and the coda energized without being frenzied. The players were alive to the ebb and flow that Kim found amidst the complexity of the Erwartung. The performance held its own as a dramatic piece of music – living, breathing, human – and made for thirty compelling minutes – spot-on balance between singer and orchestra with the latter’s details and nuances unfailingly lucid.”
–Colin’s Column
“Kim, who made her debut at the Philharmonic's podium, was able to conduct the work, which was composed without any motivic connections, in such a way that one seemed to perceive a form. The textual changes between the memory of a lover and the current fear of the forest at night are set by Schönberg as a difference between surface sounds and intensification and interpreted by Kim accordingly as waiting and urging. The piece also presents the impossible task of accompanying a highly complicated declaiming singer with an equally highly complex orchestral movement - in every bar it asks the question of what should be heard above all. Kim and the orchestra found a lot of exciting colors.”
–Berliner Zeitung