Press

From the start, Esther Yoo was able to present both delicacy of tone and a cutting edge.

This is the finest version [of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto] to cross my path in the past year… Her dark, aristocratic tone is treasurable…She plays with compact vibrato and can pare her sound down to a fine pianissimo without her 1704 ‘Prince Obolensky’ Stradivarius ever sounding undernourished…

She gave a peerless, flawless rendition of Bruch’s Violin Concerto in G Minor…she captured all the piece’s hauntingly melodious serenity, expressed in the most elegiac cadances… If the audience was deeply moved by the first two slow movements, the excitement of the finale was palpable…Her fingers were a mesmeric blur, soaring onwards and upwards towards the final thrilling ascending accelerando. The applause was thunderous….

Esther Yoo made [the opening of Mozart’s Violin Concerto in A major] blossom wondrously with her clear and intensely resonating violin tone and her highly sensitive interpretation.

Violinist Esther Yoo was completely at home with the orchestra as she performed Mendelssohn’s violin concerto with tight dexterity and balanced grace and a tone which was lean yet strong, deliberate yet gentle. Her cadenzas sparkled, with seriously impressive ornamentation and silkily subtle double-stopping, though it was her dialogue with the orchestra which really showcased her command of the music.

It’s easy to see what all the fuss is about in relation to the young Esther Yoo… What strikes you most is the richness of Yoo’s tone, combined with a radiant intensity in the Sibelius concerto, and joie de vivre in the Glazunov. She oozes confidence, rhythmic vitality, and a natural expressiveness that gives every phrase an engaging presence and freshness of thought.

Esther Yoo chose Henri Vieuxtemps’ Souvenir d’Amerique as the show-stopping encore, a reminder that achieving wonderful feats of bravura with a smile is home territory for her. Going rather deeper, Kreisler’s Recitativo and Scherzo-Caprice, possibly the highlight of the evening, brought out a wonderful instinct for pacing, and a deep sense of the freedom, invention and glorious sound she can muster.

Yoo has a prodigious clarity of diction. Everything, even in the fastest passages, is heard with crystal clarity. Chords and passages of double or triple strings sound exact and with immaculate attacks, and the richness of nuance and colour is frankly remarkable.

…a colourful stage performance in which Esther Yoo once again delivers her own character with a torrent of mischievous humour that leaves the listener with a broad smile of satisfaction.

Of the soloists, it was BBC New Generation Artist Esther Yoo who owned the morning with a performance of The Lark Ascending that achieved an audience hush of a level that surely must be a first for an all-age concert; innocence, beauty, pain and effortlessness melded in a way that will lodge for years in the memory, and the audience roared its approval.

Esther Yoo played the lyrical themes of Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2 with a ravishing tone and a fresh, unaffected style.

Yoo’s solo passages were bewitching, as she played her cadenza in the middle of the first movement with such a huge and intricate amount of detail it was almost hard to conceive the sounds were coming from just one instrument...

Yoo’s first entrance was haltingly elegant, utilizing impeccable dynamic shading and articulation. Her melodies were a voice in search of words. Runs, trills, and tumbling arpeggios were clean yet incomparably smooth. Double stops were graceful, when so many have a harsh shading.

The gorgeous, dark tone of her 1704 ‘Prince Obolenksy’ Stradivarius was a constant delight, suitably veiled in the Canzonetta and vivacious in the finale…Hers was an affectionate account of the [Tchaikovsky] concerto, the first movement’s ardent melody nobly phrased. [Yoo] is one of the most promising violinists I’ve heard in recent years. She never forces her tone and allows the music to speak for itself.

Few can match Yoo for sheer technique, dazzlingly displayed in Kreisler’s showcase Recitativo und Scherzo-Caprice.

With Love Symposium, the prodigiously gifted London-based violinist Esther Yoo partners with the Long Yu-conducted Royal Philharmonic Orchestra for a tremendous showcase of her eloquent playing….

Esther Yoo’s rendering (of the Sibelius Violin Concerto) was beautifully clean, with distinguished tonal luster and sinew…One expects great things from Esther Yoo.

It would, indeed, be difficult to imagine a more nobly poised take on this glorious score than this [Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto recording], with Esther Yoo sustaining a radiantly golden tone throughout even the most treacherous pyrotechnical terrain, captured in sound of tactile precision.

Yoo blithely dances across the orchestra, her gestures assured whether they're dance-driven or romantic.

Yoo’s slender but burnished tone proved fully in sync with the rhapsodic lyricism of [Glazunov’s Violin Concerto].

Yoo is an engaging performer, fun to watch as well as to listen to. She wove her way through the mixed meters and varied moods of the five movements with a secure dexterity, honoring the music's quirkiness and momentum in the up-tempo movements and bringing a lovely lyricism to the slow ones.

Her encore, Concert Variations on ‘Yankee Doodle’, brought the house down – a fiendishly difficult ‘trifle’ that mixes wry humour with violinistic pyrotechnics.

Yoo commands a rich tone that can be pared to something silver-fine and her dynamic range is wide while her technique is excellent and music-serving. … Yoo is very expressive throughout, she is as intensely poised and then as fiery as you like, and her full timbre in high-lying passages is notable. It’s a smouldering account, biding its time to full emotional release, first in the unstintingly sympathetic orchestra and then in a full-on cadenza, Yoo unfazed by its technical hurdles.