Mendelssohn & Dvořák

Pablo Gonzalez Conductor
Esther Yoo Violin

Leonie Holmes For Young Nick from Three Landscapes for Orchestra

Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op. 64

Dvořák Symphony No. 9 From the New World

Violinist Esther Yoo makes her long-awaited debut with the NZSO in a concert inspired by the spirit of fun and adventure.

Esther Yoo is fast becoming one of the most sought-after violinists performing on the world stage today. Her ability to shift from the most lyrically, emotive playing to the technically astounding will be on full display in Mendelssohn’s joyous Violin Concerto. Yoo sees the third movement as ‘one big party, in a grand ballroom in the late spring or early summer’ (The Strad) with the violin and orchestra dancing together playfully.

From the playful to the adventurous, with Leonie Holmes’ For Young Nick, written about a 12-year-old boy on the HMS Endeavour as it sailed around Aotearoa New Zealand, and Dvořák From the New World Symphony.

After touring the United States, Dvořák returned home to the Czech Republic deeply inspired by the music he found there. The spirituals he heard sung by African Americans while on tour fired his imagination, and these moving tunes found their way into his Ninth Symphony.