The Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra is presenting an ambitious all-concerto program this Saturday, Mar 27 at 7:30 p.m. in Miller Auditorium, featuring three violin soloists in a single evening. Music director Julian Kuerti tells Cara Lieurance that the program grew organically from the orchestra's longstanding relationship with the Stulberg International String Competition, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.
The concert opens with the world premiere of Lucas Richman's Violin Concerto No. 2, "Legacy," commissioned for the occasion. Lauren Yoon, the Stulberg Memorial Prize winner and a senior at the Academy of the Holy Angels who studies at Juilliard Pre-College, performs the new work. Richman selected Yoon personally to premiere the piece after hearing her at the competition. The concerto's three movements draw their themes from musical transliterations of the Stulberg family's names, and its movement titles — My Dear Children, A Teachable Moment, and Meet You at the End — reflect phrases Julius Stulberg used with his Junior Symphony students.
Next on the program is the Glazunov Violin Concerto in A Minor, performed by Laurentia Woo, the 2025 Stulberg Gold Medalist and Yale University freshman. Woo says the piece was her own choice. "When the Kalamazoo Symphony asked me what do you want to play, I was like, 'What about the Glazunov?'" she explains.
After intermission, former Stulberg Gold Medalist and Curtis Institute faculty member Benjamin Beilman performs Beethoven's Violin Concerto. Kuerti notes the work's famously rocky debut — Beethoven delivered pages to the soloist the night of the premiere — but says it has since become "a musical challenge more so even than a technical challenge."
Tickets are available at kalamazoosymphony.com.
The interview was summarized by Claude AI and edited by the author.
