Paloma So: Beyond Prodigy

阅读中文版

At just 21, violinist Paloma So has already built the kind of career many soloists spend decades pursuing. She made her orchestral debut at eight, won the Novosibirsk International Violin Competition before reaching the minimum age requirement, and was recently named one of Classic FM’s 30 Under 30. This summer alone, she appeared with Paavo Järvi and the Estonian Festival Orchestra at the Pärnu Music Festival before travelling to Verbier to perform Medtner’s Piano Quintet with Yunchan Lim and fellow musicians of her generation. On paper, it is the trajectory of a prodigy. In person, however, So talks less about achievements than about sound.

Three weeks before we met in London, I had first heard her perform at the Pärnu Music Festival in Estonia. Sibelius’s Violin Concerto was hardly new territory; she first learnt the work at thirteen. “Back then,” she told me later, “it was mostly about getting through the technical challenges.” Eight years later, she hears it differently. The first movement now feels like a sunrise over a snowfield, while the finale has never sounded simply triumphant. There is always light, she said, but also something unsettled beneath it.

When we met a few weeks later in London, So had just returned from Verbier, where she had performed Medtner’s Piano Quintet for the first time. She described Yunchan Lim as meticulous in rehearsal, with an extraordinary musical imagination that remained remarkably restrained. “Very delicate. Very sensitive. Very personal,” she said. “The whole collaboration felt completely natural.”

Violist Timothy Ridout was someone she had only met the day before rehearsals began, at one of the festival’s artist gatherings. Daniel Lozakovich, by contrast, had been part of her musical life for almost a decade. “We studied with the same teacher,” she said. “Years later, we found ourselves with another teacher together again.”

Paloma So and her music friends in Verbier © Anne du Chastel

Beyond the Conservatoire

Although she had decided early on that she wanted to become a professional violinist, So never wanted music to be the only thing in her life. Mathematics was one of her favourite subjects at school, and she liked the satisfaction of solving a difficult problem. Just as importantly, she wanted friends whose lives revolved around things other than practice rooms, auditions and competitions. When it came to university, she chose the dual-degree programme between Harvard University and the New England Conservatory, graduating from Harvard with a degree in economics before completing a master’s degree at NEC.

“I never studied at a conservatoire full-time,” she said when I asked what Harvard had offered that a conservatoire might not. “So it’s difficult for me to compare. But I’d like to think Harvard gave me a broader understanding of the world. That definitely feeds into my playing.”

She doesn’t describe the influence in terms of technique. Reading economics did not change the way she practised scales, nor did literature provide answers to interpretation. Instead, different ways of thinking gradually found their way into the music. Returning to Prokofiev’s First Violin Concerto after reading Gogol and Bulgakov, she found herself hearing the score differently, its strange humour and surrealism suddenly making new sense. “Music is never just music,” she said.

Competitions came early, though she rarely speaks of them as destinations. Her first international appearance was at the International Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition for Young Violinists in Poland, where she was both the youngest competitor and the second prize winner. Less than a year later she travelled to Novosibirsk. Although she was still below the competition’s minimum age, the organisers accepted her entry, and she became the youngest winner in its history.

Looking back, however, she remembers the repertoire more vividly than the results. Studying with Zakhar Bron meant learning at relentless speed. At one point, Bron had her preparing as many as eight concertos in a single year. “My teachers never treated competitions as the goal,” she said. “They were simply part of the training.”

Paloma So at Pärnu © Kaupo Kikkas

Osmanthus

Although she has spent much of her life in Britain and the United States, China has never felt far away. Her father is from Xiamen and her mother from Suzhou. Childhood summers were spent with her grandparents in Suzhou before family visits to Xiamen. In recent years she has returned regularly to perform with orchestras in Hong Kong and mainland China, and later this year she will give the première of a new Chinese violin concerto with the Hangzhou Philharmonic Orchestra.

“Russian music is probably the foundation of my playing,” she said. “But Chinese music belongs somewhere much more personal. It’s connected to my childhood.”

So describes herself as having a mild form of synaesthesia For So, music has colours and, occasionally, scents as well. Whenever she performs The Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto, she finds herself back in her grandmother’s garden in Suzhou, where the osmanthus trees flowered every autumn. Her grandmother would gather the blossoms, preserve them in honey and use them throughout the year—in tea, desserts and sometimes even coffee.

“When I play the piece,” she said, “I can smell osmanthus.”

Paloma So at Pärnu © Kaupo Kikkas

Debut at Pärnu: “More transparent, more Baltic”

Pärnu marked So’s first appearance with the Estonian Festival Orchestra and her first collaboration with Paavo Järvi. Although Sibelius’s Violin Concerto had been in her repertoire since she was thirteen, the rehearsals changed the way she heard it.

Järvi was looking for a different sound—lighter, more transparent, what So described as “more Baltic”. Over the following days she adjusted the weight of the tone, opened up the phrasing and listened more closely to everything happening beyond the solo line.

“He would suddenly stop and point to an inner voice in the orchestra,” she recalled. “‘You’ve probably never heard this before,’ he’d say. ‘And you might never hear it again. But I want you to hear it now.’” Those inner lines, once buried beneath the violin, gradually came into focus. By the end of the week, she realised she was hearing Sibelius differently.

What is your idea of perfect happiness?

I think perfect happiness exists in many different forms. If I had to put it simply, it’s whenever I find myself thinking, I want this moment to last forever.

What is your greatest fear?

Not being able to find that kind of happiness.

What is the first sound you remember falling in love with?

Can I give two answers? The first was my dog when I was five—not barking, but whining. The second was hearing Anne-Sophie Mutter play the Mendelssohn Concerto. It was the first concert I ever went to.

What has been your favourite journey so far?

If it doesn’t have to be a physical journey, then I’d say growing from childhood into adulthood.

If you could have dinner with any composer, who would it be?

Shostakovich. I took a course on his life and we studied everything—his childhood, his early years, his music, his relationship with the Soviet government. Since then I’ve met so many people who knew him personally. Now I’d just like to hear those stories from him instead.

Which piece do you wish you had written?

After the Prom last night, I found myself wishing I could write a violin concerto—a late Romantic one, full of colour and warmth, almost Wagnerian. I feel there’s still room for a concerto like that in the repertoire. Someone has to write it. It just won’t be me.

What took you the longest to understand about music?

That beauty comes in many different forms. And it isn’t always beautiful.

When do you know a piece has truly become your own?

When I keep discovering something new every time I play it, and those discoveries still make me happy.

What has Harvard given you that a conservatoire couldn’t?

I never studied at a conservatoire full-time, so it’s difficult to compare. But I’d like to think Harvard gave me a broader understanding of the world, and that inevitably finds its way into my playing.

What do you hope never changes about yourself?

My quiet curiosity.

What is your most treasured possession?

My violin.

What’s your favourite time of day?

Just after midnight. That’s when I feel most creative. If I could choose, I’d practise after midnight every day.

What do you never travel without?

Snacks. Chinese and Hong Kong snacks, especially corn potage crisps and seaweed. They’re always in my suitcase. I’m a huge foodie.

What would surprise your younger self about who you are today?

That you can be an introvert and still become an extroverted introvert.

What kind of sound are you searching for?

One I’d want to immortalise.