I’ve written it before: When Soovin Kim walks onstage and plays his violin with any ensemble, no matter the size, he and his instrument add gravitas, drama, joy and a range of colors– along with indisputable skill and technique – to the world-class musicians with whom he plays.
It happened again with the final piece in Chamber Music Northwest’s June 30 “Brandenburg All-Stars” concert at Reed College’s Kaul Auditorium. Felix Mendelssohn’s 39-minute String Quintet in A Major, Op. 18 echoed J.S. Bach’s “washes of color” evoked by the marathon two-part concert of Brandenburg Concertos, as Kim explained in his opening remarks before the concert. The Brandenburgs were performed on June 28 at Kaul and on the following night at the Oregon Bach Festival in Eugene. Kim, who is CMNW’s co-artistic director with pianist and wife Gloria Chien, did not perform in those concerts, but he is still a major player, no doubt about it.
The four-movement piece allowed the four musicians in the string quintet other than Kim to star: Jessica Lee on second violin, violists Paul Neubauer and Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, and cellist Edward Arron. Each musician is at the top of her or his game, and made the quintet sound as if it were packed with instruments, not just the five on stage. As CMNW’s introductory information noted: “Felix Mendelssohn, the greatest champion of Bach’s music in the 19th century, brought those (Bach’s) rich colors and textures to his own chamber music, particularly in his radiant viola quintets for strings.”
In the quintet’s third movement, the lightning-fast scherzo, Kim, 49, pushed the accelerator even harder. He won the Paganini International Violin Competition when he was 20 years old, decades before his CMNW co-artistic director gig that began in 2020, so he can play fast. It was pretty thrilling, especially when the musicians stopped seamlessly in sync at the end of each movement. Mendelssohn, who dedicated the quintet to his violin teacher Eduard Reitz, dead at 30 years old of tuberculosis in 1832, had a lot to do with reviving Bach’s music in the 19th century, and Reitz inspired Mendelssohn to compose for strings…