Violinist Yuri Park and pianist Angela Cook to perform at Globe Sunday Matinee Concert in Palmerston North

Pianist Angela Cook and violinist Yuri Park will perform sonatas by Veracini, Mozart, and Grieg on March 26.

This month’s Globe Sunday Matinee Concert brings together two of the finest concert musicians in the region.

Yuri Park is an experienced violinist and teacher. In 1996, she graduated from Sookmyung Women’s University in Seoul with a Bachelor of Music in violin performance.

She moved to Palmerston North from South Korea in 2000 and took an active part in the music life of the city. After she moved to Auckland with her family in 2011, she completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Music at the University of Auckland.

Last year, Park moved back to Palmerston North and was the concerto soloist in the spring concert of the Manawatū Sinfonia.

Angela Cook gained her diploma from the London College of Music before completing an honours degree in piano performance with teachers Peter Donohoe and Kathleen Parry Jones at Victoria University Manchester.

She arrived in New Zealand in 1993 with her husband and four children, and quickly established a large teaching studio. She has enjoyed many opportunities to perform as soloist and chamber musician in and around Palmerston North and overseas (Japan, Australia and the UK).

Cook is also an adjudicator, conductor and composer. Twenty-nine years ago, she founded the monthly Sunday afternoon Te Manawa recital series, which became the Globe Sunday Matinee series.

She now lives in Wairarapa but teaches in Palmerston North two days a week, and in Carterton and at Rathkeale College for the remainder of the week. She is also joint founder and co-director of the Wairarapa Kids’ Choir.

For their first concert together, Park and Cook will perform sonatas by Francesco Veracini, Wolfgang Mozart, and Edvard Grieg.

The Italian 18th-century composer Veracini was considered one of Europe’s top violinists during his lifetime. The sonata to be performed is in the Baroque suite form of contrasting dances.

The Mozart sonata is the first of 20 mature violin and piano sonatas, and was written in a light, almost playful style for Mozart’s pupil Therese Serrarius, the daughter of his landlord in Mannheim.

Grieg’s second violin sonata was written during his honeymoon in the summer of 1867. The spirit of Norwegian folk music imbues the work.

The concert finishes with Graceful Ghost Rag by William Bolcom, an American composer and pianist.

He has received the Pulitzer Prize, the National Medal of Arts, a Grammy Award, the Detroit Music Award, and was named 2007 Composer of the Year by Musical America.

The Details

What: Globe Sunday Matinee Concert

When: Sunday, March 26, 2.30pm

Where: Globe Theatre

Admission: Donation, recommended from $5