Karen Gomyo makes Rome debut with Semyon Bychkov on the podium
April 2022
Gomyo makes her debut with the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia conducted by Semyon Bychkov.
Latest News
“Gomyo was extraordinary” in her subscription debut with the New York Philharmonic – the New York Times
November 18, 2021
“The soloist, Karen Gomyo, making her Philharmonic subscription series debut, conveyed with richly warm and textured sound the ruminative quality of a lyrical line that keeps trying to take clear shape. Yet Gomyo pressed below the surface to suggest that this music was not simply sad, but truly grief-stricken.
A noble yet still dark Passacaglia slow movement leads to a vehement cadenza, and then a Burlesque finale. Here the bitter, almost hostile, ironic Shostakovich seems to come through in episodes of blaring fanfares and faux-triumphant marches. The orchestra captured it with brilliant sharpness, and Gomyo was extraordinary, dispatching the tangle of technical challenges with fervor and command.”
-Review by Anthony Tommasini, the New York Times
Karen Gomyo at the Hollywood Bowl with Gustavo Dudamel
August 26, 2021
Karen Gomyo performs with the LA Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl with Gustavo Dudamel conducting.
“A spectacular debut” with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
February 2020
“Karen Gomyo, making a spectacular debut with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, managed it triumphantly.
The opening lament poured out of her in an unbroken wave of controlled energy, concentrated and intense, and she pirouetted her way through the ghoulish jig of the Scherzo as though performing a high-wire act. Her cadenza, coming out of darkly controlled Passacaglia, was unblinkingly focused, leading into a finale of white hot mania.”
– The Times (17th Feb. 2020)
“A Violinist in the Circus” – Karen Gomyo makes New Year’s Eve debut with DSO Berlin
December 2019
Making her debut with Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin, Karen Gomyo brought in the New Year alongside Cristian Macelaru and the Roncalli Circus.
Alongside the circus, Karen performed pieces by Astor Piazzolla: Libertango; Fritz Kreisler: Liebesleid; and Niccolò Paganini: Il carnevale di Venezia.
Karen Gomyo debuts with Philharmonia Orchestra in London
May 2019
Karen Gomyo simultaneously made her Philharmonia Orchestra and Royal Festival Hall debuts performing the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto under the baton of frequent collaborator Jakub Hrůša.
Karen Gomyo makes BBC Symphony Orchestra debut in Dubai
March 2019
BBC Proms Dubai 2019 saw Karen Gomyo perform Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the fast-rising British conductor Ben Gernon.
Karen Gomyo signs with CM Artists New York
January 2019
Linda Marder of CM Artists New York has this week announced the signing of Karen Gomyo to her roster for North American representation – effective immediately. Etta Morgan of Askonas Holt in London continues to represent Karen in Europe, Australasia & Asia.
A “heroic, undaunted performance” in San Francisco Symphony debut
November 2018 - San Francisco Chronicle
A performance of Shostakovich’s First Violin Concerto is nothing to take lightly, either for the performers or the audience. The music digs in deep, across four weighty movements and one of the composer’s trademark massive cadenzas for the soloist, and there are challenges for everyone involved.
In her impressive showing with the San Francisco Symphony on Thursday, Nov. 8 in Davies Symphony Hall, violinist Karen Gomyo didn’t insult our intelligence by making the thing seem easy. On the contrary — she matched the composer step for demanding step, producing a rendition that gleamed with the sweat of honest labor.
Together with guest conductor Jakub Hrusa, Gomyo — a Japanese-born virtuoso who now lives in Berlin — dived into Shostakovich’s showpiece with an obvious respect for both the technical and interpretive difficulties ahead. The combination of craggy rhetoric, capacious formal scale and sheer finger-busting passagework that infuses this concerto means that anyone can go astray at any moment.
Yet, by the time the piece drew to a close nearly 40 minutes later, Gomyo and Hrusa in partnership had conferred an air of triumph on the proceedings. Shostakovich’s expansive lines of thought, which can often seem discursive and even meandering in the wrong hands, emerged here with a welcome sense of formal tautness; the composer’s acrid sensibilities sounded inviting without losing their essential character.
Gomyo’s playing boasts a bold, steely beauty, which at least in this context made few concessions to traditional notions of lyricism or expressive warmth. (Her encore, a lovely account of the fourth of Astor Piazzolla’s “Six Tango Etudes,” offered a more overtly empathetic voice, though even here she made sure to keep the rhythms crisp and muscular.)
In the concerto’s broad opening movement, which the composer labeled “Nocturne,” Gomyo spun out long-breathed melodies with unflinching forthrightness, as if encouraging the listener to revel in the music’s dark, sinewy textures. The bustling scherzo — equally dark, even more corrosive — got a ferocious, precise reading.
But the glory of the performance came in the robust third-movement Passacaglia, which is also the concerto’s center of gravity. In this succession of variations on a theme, Gomyo brought out one character of the music after another, engaging in eloquent counterpoint with other members of the orchestra, delivering the solo part with insight and tact, and finally settling in to give a bravura account of the huge solo cadenza.
Gomyo premieres Adams Chamber Concerto in Chicago
May 2018
Karen Gomyo performed the world premiere of Samuel Adams’ new Chamber Concerto, with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Esa-Pekka Salonen, to great critical acclaim. The work was written for her and commissioned by the CSO to celebrate the 20th anniversary of its MusicNow series.
New General Management (Europe, Asia & Australasia)
June 2017
Karen Gomyo is delighted to announce the appointment of Askonas Holt as her new management partner for Europe and Asia. Askonas Holt is one of the world’s leading arts management companies, specialising in the field of classical music.