Nine years after becoming the first South Korean pianist to win gold at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, Yekwon Sunwoo is heading back to the city where that victory happened. On October 10, he'll join the Chamber Music Society of Fort Worth Ensemble for a concert inside the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth's 250-seat auditorium, with tickets priced between $10 and $45.
Sunwoo won the competition's top prize in June 2017 at age 28, an achievement that came with a $50,000 cash award, three years of international booking management, and a recording contract with Universal Music Group, according to The Juilliard School. As fortworth.culturemap.com notes, he remains the first Korean gold medalist in the competition's history, a distinction that has kept him closely tied to Fort Worth's classical music scene in the years since.
That connection is very much by design. The Chamber Music Society of Fort Worth, founded in 1989, has long made a habit of folding Van Cliburn Competition laureates into its seasonal programming, according to Maverick Concerts. The competition itself was established in Fort Worth in 1962 to honor Texan pianist Van Cliburn after his landmark 1958 victory at the inaugural International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, a milestone Hoodline has covered in the context of other regional chamber programming.
Who's On Stage With Sunwoo
Leading the ensemble is Gary Levinson, who plays violin and has served as the Chamber Music Society's artistic director since spring 2013. Levinson is also Senior Principal Associate Concertmaster of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, a post that followed his selection by Zubin Mehta to join the New York Philharmonic in 1988, before he had even finished his undergraduate degree at Juilliard, according to the Dallas Symphony Orchestra's own biography of him.
Joining Levinson is violist Michael Klotz, a teaching professor at Florida International University and member of the Amernet String Quartet who was named a Charter Member of the Chamber Music Society of Fort Worth Ensemble in 2015, per the Blue Candlelight Music Series. Rounding out the group is cellist Inbal Segev, an Israeli-American musician who co-founded the Amerigo Trio and has appeared as a featured soloist with ensembles including the Berlin Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, and Dallas Symphony Orchestra, according to the Nashville Symphony.
A Program Spanning Schubert to Dvořák
The night's program traces a wide arc through chamber repertoire. It opens with Franz Schubert's String Trio No. 1 in B-flat major, D. 471, which the composer wrote in September 1816 at just 19 years old and left unfinished, completing only the first movement and 39 bars of a second, per the Sebago-Long Lake Music Festival's program notes.
The program also includes Antonín Dvořák's Piano Trio in F minor, Op. 65, and Johannes Brahms's Piano Trio No. 3 in C minor, Op. 101, according to fortworth.culturemap.com's event listing. The evening's anchor is Brahms's Piano Quartet No. 3 in C minor, Op. 60, a work the composer finished in 1875 after a two-decade struggle that traced back to Robert Schumann's final illness in the 1850s. Its dark, dramatic character earned it the nickname the “Werther Quartet,” according to background compiled by the LA Phil.
Inside the Modern's Acoustically Upgraded Auditorium
The setting is itself part of the draw. The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth was designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Tadao Ando and completed a comprehensive audio and visual equipment upgrade to its 250-seat auditorium in summer 2023, according to Tanglewood Moms. Ando's building was conceived as an “Arbor for Art” set against a 1.5-acre reflecting pond, incorporating 40-foot glass walls and cantilevered concrete roof modules engineered for spatial and acoustic clarity, per ArchNewsNow.
Concertgoers arriving early can take in a pre-concert conversation at 1:15 pm before the performance, according to fortworth.culturemap.com. The venue sits at 3200 Darnell St. in Fort Worth's Cultural District, with tickets ranging from $10 to $45 for the October 10 date.
