HYE-JIN KIM VIOLIN

(Israel), Taos, Bard, Bravo Vail, Santa Fe, Skaneateles, Music in the Vineyards, Chesapeake, Madeline Island, Kingston and Manchester festivals. He has performed extensively as a member of the Cooperstown Quartet, Concertante and the Daedalus Quartet, and has recorded for National Public Radio, New York’s WQXR, and the Bridge and Kleos labels.

Gregorian is the Four Seasons Chamber Music Festival Distinguished Professor in Music at East Carolina University where he has been on the faculty since 1998 and is on the faculty at the Taos School of Music and the Manchester Music Festival. He performs on a Francesco Ruggeri violin from 1690 and a Grubaugh and Seifert viola from 2006.

Violinist Hye-Jin Kim is known for her musical sensitivity and deeply engaging performances that transport audiences beyond mere technical virtuosity. Since her First Prize win at the Yehudi Menuhin International Violin Competition at the age of nineteen and a subsequent win at the Concert Artists Guild International Competition, she has led a versatile career as soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician.

Kim has performed as a soloist with major orchestras worldwide, including the Philadelphia, New Jersey Symphony, New Haven Symphony, BBC Concert, Seoul Philharmonic, Pan Asia Symphony, and Hannover Chamber orchestras. She has appeared in Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Kimmel Center Verizon Hall, the Kravis Center, Salzburg’s Mirabel Schloss, St. John’s Smith Square, and Wigmore Hall in London. At the invitation of Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, she performed at the UN Headquarters in Geneva and New York.

Born in Seoul, Korea, Hye-Jin Kim entered the Curtis Institute of Music at age 14 and earned her master’s degree at the New England Conservatory. Kim’s debut CD, From the Homeland, is available on CAG Records. Kim is an Associate Professor of Violin at East Carolina University and a member of the Cooperstown Quartet. Kim is the creator of Lullaby Dreams, a project that brings beauty and humanity to the hospital experience of babies, families, and medical staff in NICUs and children’s hospitals through music.

CORIOLAN OVERTURE, OP. 62

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)

Written / 1807

Movements / One

Style / Romantic

Duration / Eight minutes

Gnaeus Marcius Coriolanus was a legendary Roman hero who lived during the late fifth and early sixth centuries. He received the name Coriolanus after he captured the city of Corioli in the war against the Volscians. A man from the upper class (the patricians), he opposed the efforts of the lower class (the plebeians), who were gaining political power. During a famine in Rome, Coriolanus argued that the plebeians should not get any grain unless they would allow the abolition of the office of the tribune. Naturally, the tribunes disagreed and banished him to exile. Coriolanus took refuge among his former enemies, the Volscians. Together they laid siege to Rome. Bent on revenge and determined to ruin Rome, Coriolanus would not listen to the pleas of her priests and patricians. They called on his mother Volumni and his wife Virgilia to plead on their behalf. Obstinate at first, Coriolanus eventually gave in, a ruined man.

There are several theatrical versions of this story. Shakespeare follows Plutarch’s history and has Coriolanus murdered by the Volscians. Another playwright, Heinrich Joseph von

Collin, has Coriolanus take his own life. Collin’s play was popular in Vienna for several years after it was first performed in 1802. It was this play that inspired Beethoven to write a new overture. It premiered in 1807 at the palace of Prince Lobkowitz, along with the premieres of his Fourth Symphony and Fourth Piano Concerto.

The overture focuses on the psychological drama of Coriolanus. The opening describes his obstinate anger and resolution against the Romans; the tender second theme expresses the pleadings of his wife and mother. Maynard Solomon, in his masterful biography of Beethoven, claims that Coriolan “demonstrates that Beethoven did not always insist on joyful conclusions, but was able to locate transcendence in the acceptance of death itself.”

© 2022 John P. Varineau