This week, you  can listen to our 1st concertmaster Suyoen Kim playing Mozart as a soloist with the Konzerthausorchester. We took her for a ride in our slow elevator to ask her about the "role change" on the way up.

I think I get more impatient the older I get. I travel a lot, so strikes on the railroads or in air travel, for example, have a big impact on my life and my work. When you try to do things in the best possible way yourself, the expectation that everyone will work well together and everything will work increases. But I try to be a little careful with this wishful thinking, because your own standards do not apply to everybody all the time, of course.

If I'm impatient, it's only on the inside. I never move in a way that makes me seem rushed or hurried. I think it's important to exude confidence and calm and not lose it, especially when things get a bit difficult and calm is required. I would want that from someone else, too. But it's a balancing act - sometimes you have to pick up the pace, of course. And that can be all the more effective if you are otherwise very calm.

I don't think that's fundamentally different. I once heard a wonderful phrase: you have to be a good chamber musician to be a soloist and a soloist to be a good chamber music partner. I asked Iván Fischer what he considered to be a good concertmaster. He replied: "A concertmaster should simply play so beautifully that he inspires everyone around him and not think so much that he should somehow lead or control something." I find that very important and it has become a bit of a guiding principle for me - as a concertmaster, soloist and chamber musician.