TOWN
Profile
Violin Virtuoso Fifteen-year-old Rachel Yi takes on Mendelssohn this month / by Stephanie Trotter // photography by Paul Mehaffey
H
er left wrist quivers as her right hand pushes and pulls a horsehair bow over taut strings. A lock of shiny black hair flies across her brow, while her tiny body sways in time, a chin-thrust punctuating the end of the movement. The five-foot-one dynamo transports listeners to other worlds with her Vigato violin, but don’t call her a prodigy. “I feel happy when I hear that, but at the same time, I don’t know if that’s the right word for me,” shares the quiet 15-year-old. “I feel like a lot of people have expectations of that, and I don’t know if I can meet them. It’s not too heavy that I can’t bear it, but it weighs on me.” And how could it not?
Rachel Yi has been preparing for this month’s solo most of her life. On May 14, she’ll stand alone in the spotlight to perform Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op. 64, with members of the Greenville Symphony Orchestra, as part of the Young Artist Orchestra’s season-ending show. “If you talk about violin technique, it’s not a very hard piece,” she elaborates. “Tchaikovsky and Paganini, those are hard for the fingers and bow. The hardest part for me with Mendelssohn is understanding what he’s trying to tell you through his phrasing—what was going on, and what kind of character he was portraying.” While most teens toy with the heart of their crush, Rachel is probing the head of a nineteenth-century German composer. “Rachel is rare,” explains Greenville County Youth Orchestra’s executive director Holly Caprell. “She has a finesse. She can finesse her instrument when she needs to. It’s easy to be technical. It’s harder to convey the emotional message, and she does. That’s an extraordinary thing for her age.” Caprell bestows even more praise upon the violinist for how she leads the elite studentmusicians who compose GCYO’s Young Artist Orchestra. “What
Bow Forth: Violinist Rachel Yi and the GCYO’s Young Artist Orchestra will perform “shoulder to shoulder” with members of the Greenville Symphony Orchestra at the Peace Center for the Performing Arts’ Gunter Theatre, Sat, May 14, 7:30 p.m. Adults, $27; children, $10. For more information: gcyo.net.
54 TOWN / towncarolina.com
TOWN_May_Profile.indd 54
4/20/16 4:29 PM