Violinist will join chamber for Deer Valley Music Festival

Violinist Yoonshin Song kicks off this week's concerts at the Deer Valley Music Festival.

The Korean-born soloist, who is still in her 20s, joins the Utah Symphony Chamber Orchestra and associate conductor David Cho Wednesday for the festival's first chamber concert of the season. She'll be playing Sergei Prokofiev's early Violin Concerto No. 1 in D major, op. 19. Also on the program is Maurice Ravel's "Pavane pour une infante défunte" and Robert Schumann's Symphony No. 1 ("Spring").

The Prokofiev concerto is a work that appealed to Song from the start. "I fell in love with it immediately," she said in a phone interview from New York where she now lives. "There is lots of variety in it. You get to show your musicality and technical side. It's a masterpiece and a fun piece to play."

This will only be the second time she's had the chance to play it with orchestra, she said. "The other time was at a competition, and I'm looking forward to playing it with orchestra again."

Song is a veteran of several international violin competitions, including the inaugural Stradivarius International Violin Competition in Salt Lake City in 2007. She didn't think she would walk away a winner, but ended up taking first prize. "It was delightful and a nice surprise." For the final round Song played the Brahms concerto. "It was a great experience."

Unlike many young artists who compete, Song isn't too intimidated playing for a panel of judges. "I get nervous, of course, but once I am onstage I forget that I am playing at a competition. I am playing for the audience and I try to feel the chemistry between the audience and me."

Song picked up the violin when she was 5. "I don't come from a musical family, but my mom loves classical music," she said. There was no pressure for her to take up an instrument, it was just something Song wanted to do.

"After I started, my mom would say, 'I wish my daughter could play the Mozart (violin) concertos." She loves Mozart and she's always happy when I play his music."

She received her early education at the Seoul National University. After getting her bachelor's degree, Song came to the United States, studying first with Donald Weilerstein at the New England Conservatory then with Robert Mann at the Manhattan School of Music, where she graduated with her artist's diploma in May.

Since winning the Stradivarius competition, Song has seen her career blossom. She has performed recitals and soloed with orchestras in the United States, Europe and Korea. But Wednesday's concert will be her first time back in Utah since the competition.