Korean-born, Austria-based flute player Jasmine Choi shares her range in performances with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra this week. As she plays Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Flute Concerto No. 2 and her own arrangement of “Zigeunerweisen” by late 19th-century Spanish composer Pablo de Sarasate, Choi’s airy tone, poignant emotion and virtuosic breath work make for an impressive concert.
The SPCO also performs two works by Sergei Prokofiev — Sonata for Two Violins, performed by principal violin Kyu-Young Kim and SPCO musician Eunice Kim, and the foreboding Sonata No. 7, “Stalingrad.”
Jasmine Choi will perform with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra at the Ordway Concert Hall in St. Paul on Saturday, April 26, 2025, and at Ted Mann Concert Hall in Minneapolis on Sunday, April 27, 2025. (Studio SW / St. Paul Chamber Orchestra)
Eunice Kim opens the Andante cantabile movement of Prokofiev’s sonata with clarity, and is joined by Kyu-Young Kim playing a dissonant harmony. The opening movement has a sense of elasticity, with the music yawning and stretching and then contracting. In the Allegro movement, the two musicians play short, fierce notes, at times almost grinding away at their instruments, with intermittent pizzicato and a sense of swarming disarray and confusion.
The music grows softer in the third movement, called Commodo (quasi allegretto), and then turns a bit brighter for the last Allegro con brio, with rafter-climbing high notes performed by Eunice Kim.
The rest of the orchestra comes on stage for Stephen Prutsman’s arrangement of Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 7, originally written for piano. The SPCO commissioned the composer to arrange the “Stalingrad” Sonata and Prokofiev’s First Violin Sonata, which concertmaster Steven Copes will perform with the orchestra May 2 and 3.
Prutsman takes advantage of a wide range of instruments to boost the heavy toil of Prokofiev’s music. Two timpani drums and other percussion make a sense of crashing bombs and gunshots, while the brass section also adds to the war-like mood of the piece. In the mournful Andante caloroso movement, tubular bells create a haunting feeling of waiting. The work’s third movement is fast and triumphant, with all of the instruments banding together in a flurry of sound.
After intermission, Choi plays her arrangement of Mozart’s Flute Concerto No. 2 with the orchestra. A musician with a rather sprightly presence herself, she plays with a lighthearted sound, dancing through trills. In the second movement, Andante ma non troppo, Choi almost hovers in the hair in long suspensions, later climbing the scale with short staccato notes. Choi has an almost unbelievable lung capacity, using circular breathing to carry long phrases, even as she returns to her almost bird-like gracefulness in the last movement.
Choi’s Pablo de Sarasate arrangement makes for a fun close to the evening. Composed originally for violin, Choi finds the fiddle voice of her instrument in the Hungarian folk-inspired music. (De Sarasate called the piece “Gypsy Airs,” though the musical traditions he borrows from aren’t related to the Romani people.)
De Sarasate’s score employs a range of violin techniques that aren’t possible on a flute— double stops, for instance, and pizzicato. And yet Choi’s playing has plenty of gusto, plus haunting harmonics. Choi taps into a deep feeling in the work, expressing an aching emotion with her flute.
And sometimes the piece flies like the wind at breakneck speed. Choi’s breath is on overdrive: At times she almost spits into the mouthpiece. It’s a fast and furious finale to a great concert.
If you go
Who: The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra
What: Jasmine Choi Plays Mozart’s Second Flute Concerto
When: 7 p.m. Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday
Where: Saturday: The Ordway, 345 Washington St., St. Paul. Sunday: Ted Mann Concert Hall, 2128 Fourth Street S., Mpls.
Accessibility: Ordway: Elevators access all floors of Concert Hall, accessibility seating for all mobility devices (request when buying tickets); service animals welcome (inform ticket representative); listening units and large print available upon request. One single-occupancy, accessible restroom in the Music Theater lobby. Ordway.org/visit/accessibility. Ted Mann Concert Hall: Access via south side power door entrance. Elevator and adapted restrooms available.
Capsule: Guest flutist Jasmine Choi plays Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Pablo de Sarasate, while the SPCO also take on two Prokofiev works in an evening full of adaptations.
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