Pianist Yeol Eum Son on tackling Beethoven with the SCO: 'He tells us a lot about determination'

South Korean pianist Yeol Eum Son is fast becoming a familiar face in Scotland. She made her debut here – with Ravel’s fiendish Left Hand Concerto – alongside the Iceland Symphony Orchestra back in early 2020, in one of the final concerts before Covid locked us all down. She returned to great acclaim at Fife’s East Neuk Festival in 2023, and made her Edinburgh International Festival debut just a few weeks later. She’s clearly getting to know the place well: “I love the Scottish landscape – and how foggy it can be!” she laughs.

Yeol Eum is forging her strongest relationship, however, with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. She launched that partnership with Mozart in December 2022, and returns with more Mozart – a duo of contrasting piano concertos, Nos 21 and 24 – in October this year. “They’re such a tasteful band,” she says. “Everything they do is so organic, stylish, vigorous yet embracing. The last time I played the Mozart Concerto with them, they played Dvořák’s Symphony No. 7 in the second half – I was so impressed at how they sounded so completely but wonderfully different than they did in Mozart.”

As we approach the close of the current SCO season, however, Yeol Eum turns to Beethoven, and specifically his powerful Piano Concerto No. 3. She might be famed for her tender touch, her refinement and poetic elegance, but she’s just as capable of fiery, muscular playing. “Beethoven’s music can be highly assertive and persistent,” she explains. “He tells us a lot about determination.”

Yeol Eum Son

She draws parallels, however, between the two composers whose music she’s (so far) performed with the SCO. “Of course Beethoven admired Mozart so much, and the Third Concerto is known to be heavily influenced by Mozart’s Concerto in the same key – No. 24 in C minor, K491.” Perhaps not coincidentally, that’s one of the two Mozart concertos Yeol Eum has planned for her performance with the SCO later this year.

All this talk of Mozart and Beethoven, however, might be doing Yeol Eum a disservice. She takes enormous pride in the breadth of her repertoire, and indeed in her championing of some unfairly overlooked musical figures – from Alkan to Lekeu and Galuppi, and particularly the fascinating Soviet jazz/classical crossover composer Nikolai Kapusin, to whose music she’s devoted an entire CD. “Yes, for me it’s important to be eclectic in what I play, but only in the sense that I don’t only eat Korean food all my life either. I simply love and want the diversity. But it’s also true that I do learn a lot about one thing from another – I’d have a different perspective on Rachmaninov, for example, after playing Bach. And vice versa. Or I’d think differently about playing Chopin after working on a piece by a living composer. I love Mozart and Beethoven, but I need lots of control for them as I’m extremely exposed. I get much more nervous when I’m playing those composers on stage, too.”

It’s somewhat surprising to hear a musician actually admitting to nerves. But Yeol Eum a disarmingly straightforward, direct figure, and a performer who clearly thinks deeply about the music she plays – and, importantly, about her own relationship with it. Perhaps that honesty and serious-mindedness also contributed to another success in her earlier life – hugely popular monthly columns in one of South Korea’s leading Sunday newspapers, which were later collected together into a best-selling book. She still loves writing as a counterpoint to playing, she says – after all, you can quickly change and improve something you’ve written, whereas a performance happens entirely in the moment. With all that journalistic expertise, however, let’s turn the tables. What would she ask herself if she were in my position? “Wow, that’s an excellent question!” she laughs. And it elicits another disarmingly honest response. “You know, generally speaking, as I’m a musician myself, I’m not that curious about musicians and their lives any more. There are many pianists and musicians that I adore with all my heart, but I don’t particularly want to meet them or interview them. Instead, after listening to them playing, I’d love to point out a few places and ask why they play those sections as they do. So maybe I would do the same to myself.”

Considering that deep thinking, it’s perhaps not surprising that Yeol Eum considers herself “generally a shy person”, though it’s perhaps more eyebrow-raising that she continues: “It sometimes takes me a while to create rapport in making music.” How does she manage to balance that with being constantly on the road – or, more accurately, in the air – and perpetually developing new relationships with ensembles and individual musicians around the world? Just this season, for example, she performs right across Europe, tours the USA and Canada, and has a number of recitals in South Korea too. “I actually almost didn’t realise, until quite recently, that this lifestyle is an unusual one,” she admits. “I can’t even say if I enjoy it or dislike it – I think I just accept it. You can always complain about your situation, but in the same way, you can always be happy too. Does that make sense?”

Yeol Eum Son

The answer to establishing rapport in an itinerant career, of course, is in return engagements – like those in her fast-developing relationship with the SCO. “I don’t think there are many musicians who wouldn’t want to play with the SCO, since they’re such a superb ensemble,” she smiles. But there are other factors, too. “To be honest, since I’m travelling so much, just to be able to picture a city, an airport I already know, a venue whose acoustics I can remember, and an orchestra that sounds a particular way – all that already gives me a big comfort. The location, the venue, the audience, even the piano all play their part in me wanting to come back. And being in the Usher Hall or Glasgow City Halls together with the SCO is bliss.”

Yeol Eum Son plays Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with the SCO and conductor Maxim Emelyanychev at the Usher Hall, Edinburgh, 8 May and the City Halls, Glasgow, 9 May, www.sco.org.uk. This feature was produced in association with the SCO.