Ahead of his concert at the Korean Cultural Center in Brussels on Thursday, January 22, where he will perform Anton Kraft's cello concerto, we had a fascinating conversation with South Korean cellist Yoonsoo Yeo.
Discovering an inner language
For Yoonsoo Yeo, the cello sounds like a voice. Not by chance: from an early age, he was moved by the way the instrument can express emotions that escape words. Growing up listening to recordings by Yo-Yo Ma and Pablo Casals, he intuitively felt that music is more than form or sound alone. "Even as a child, I had the feeling that music speaks directly to inner experience," he says. It wasn't the physical proximity to the instrument or pure aesthetic beauty that mattered, but the idea that expression could be its own autonomous language.
This thought stayed with him when he started playing at age eight. For years, the cello remained a source of joy, without pressure or ambition. Only when he was eleven and a teacher approached him after a concert about his exceptional talent did something shift. A year of more intense study and unexpected competition victories followed. "Then I thought: maybe this is my path." Yet that path was far from straightforward. Yeo deals with hearing loss in one ear, a limitation that made him doubt himself many times. What kept him going was the experience that his playing could touch others. "Seeing people happy because of music gave me the strength to continue."
An identity between continents
Born in New Zealand, Yoonsoo Yeo moved to South Korea at age nine to study music. The transition was profound. Not only the language—with its subtle distinctions between formal and informal registers—proved challenging; the culture also felt stricter, more structured. Where New Zealand offered space for freedom and imagination, Korea taught him focus, discipline, and drive to excel. "Looking back," he says, "I developed my flexibility in New Zealand, and in Korea I learned how to fully harness it."
Later came studies in the United States—including at the Curtis Institute of Music—and today he continues his education in Europe. Each continent left its mark. "My musical identity wasn't shaped by one country, but by the combination of all those experiences." It perhaps explains why his playing is hard to pin down in a single aesthetic framework: it's rooted, but not confined.
This cultural layering also influences how Yeo experiences concert culture. In East Asia, he notices great emotional intensity among listeners, but also a certain distance from classical music as a daily practice. In Japan, classical music is, in his view, deeply embedded in social life and remarkably accessible. In South Korea, by contrast, it's more often experienced as a genre for devoted enthusiasts. In Belgium and more broadly in Europe, music feels more naturally woven into daily life for him: attending a concert is not an exception, but a taken-for-granted part of the culture. This organic relationship between musicians and audiences creates, according to Yeo, more freedom and room for artistic experimentation.
Competition as self-inquiry
From a young age, Yeo gained international recognition through competitions. Yet he didn't experience success as liberating. On the contrary: it fueled an inner drive to live up to expectations. "I didn't do competitions for the prizes, but to understand where I stood and who I could become." Growth, not results, was the measure. He's never lost that attitude.
In a competitive music world, Yeo protects his artistic voice not by measuring himself against others, but by listening attentively. "Everyone has their own way of shining." For him, authenticity means knowing your strengths, being honest about your shortcomings, and working on them without losing your identity.
Learning to listen
The differences between his education in South Korea and the United States were fundamental. In South Korea, the emphasis was on acquiring technical tools and stylistic ideals. Curtis, by contrast, encouraged critical reflection and interpretive freedom. "They didn't ask for the right answer, but for the possibilities." That shift taught him to listen—to the music, but also to himself.
Mentors like Peter Wiley and Carter Brey played a crucial role. Wiley combined creative freedom with daily discipline: Bach, scales, études. Brey taught him how context changes everything, how intonation, tone, and bowing technique differ between solo, chamber music, and orchestra. One piece of advice stuck with him: technique must never become an obstacle to expression. "Reliable technique is ultimately what makes freedom possible."
The Music Chapel as a laboratory
Since September 2023, Yoonsoo Yeo has been Artist in Residence at the Music Chapel Queen Elisabeth. The isolated location, in the middle of the forest, creates rare concentration. "Here I can practice the way I truly need to." Beyond practice time, it's the many performance opportunities and the holistic approach that shape him. "The Music Chapel takes responsibility for the human being behind the musician."
Under the guidance of Gary Hoffman and Jeroen Reuling, Yeo developed something he had previously lacked: the ability for self-diagnosis. "I now see not only what's missing, but also what I can build on." That clarity gave him firmer artistic confidence.
The international community at the Music Chapel works like a mirror. "I learn tremendously by listening to others." The diversity of sounds, backgrounds, and approaches is broadening, sometimes overwhelming, but always stimulating.
Yeo explicitly views this phase as a decisive period in his life. At 24 years old, he experiences the years until his thirties as a "golden time," in which he wants to test and push his boundaries. Especially in terms of tone, intonation systems, and technical refinement, he feels there is still unexplored territory. Not out of impatience, but out of curiosity, he wants to discover how far he can go. He sees that open attitude as an essential part of artistic maturity.
Repertoire as a mirror of the soul
Yeo's repertoire choice is broad and context-sensitive. Sometimes he seeks tension, sometimes rest. "It depends on the space, the audience, and also on my own inner state." His approach to the score is equally nuanced. With composers like Beethoven, the text is the foundation; with Haydn or Piazzolla, he allows more room for spontaneity, nourished by historical knowledge and personal instinct.
Tonight he plays Anton Kraft's Cello Concerto in D with the Orchestre Royal de Chambre de Wallonie. The work, related to Haydn but more explicitly virtuosic, requires what he sees not as heroic struggle, but elegance and confidence. "The challenge is to show refinement without letting the effort show."
Although he doesn't experience the concerto as a battle, the technical demands are real. Especially in the third movement, complex arpeggio passages confront him again and again with utmost concentration and flexibility. Yet he doesn't view those moments as something that must be "conquered," but as part of the larger musical gesture.
Instrument as conversation partner
Yeo plays a Carl Becker cello from 1934. Not the objective timbre, but compatibility with his inner conception of sound was decisive. "An instrument must resonate with who you are." When that resonance exists, a broader world of expressive possibilities opens up. "Then a dialogue emerges, and I sometimes discover directions I hadn't foreseen beforehand."
On doubt, imperfection, and meaning
For Yeo, an interpretation is never finished. Every performance is provisional, subject to time and experience. Perfectionism remains a driving force, but he knows that true perfection doesn't exist. Sometimes music asks for rest, for distance. "Just as food must ripen, so does music."
Doubt is a constant companion. He explores, tests alternatives, leaves questions open. Only on stage does he let that doubt go. "There I trust my process. That's the only thing I don't question."
That doubt is not only existential but also methodical. Yeo constantly tests different interpretive possibilities and deliberately leaves some questions open until just before the performance. It's precisely this process that nourishes his confidence: once playing, he chooses to let the doubt go and fully entrust himself to the work that came before.
What he wishes for the audience is not a single emotion, but something that lingers: a question, an unease, a moment of reflection. "Music may also be rough around the edges." The most meaningful concerts are those that continue to live in the listener.
Looking ahead
Yoonsoo Yeo doesn't think in terms of career, but of necessary encounters. In the short term, he wants to keep growing; in the long term, he hopes his music—not his name—will be remembered. A modest dream is a complete performance of Beethoven's cello sonatas and variations: a life journey in sound.
He places that personal vision within a broader reflection on the future of classical music. According to Yeo, tradition need not be the opposite of innovation. He advocates for attention to contemporary composers and for ways to reconnect classical music with the present, without losing its depth and dignity. For young musicians, he sees a double responsibility in this: passing on the legacy with integrity and building bridges to new forms of meaning.
For young musicians, he has simple but demanding advice: be patient, compare less, listen more. Failure is part of it. "As long as mistakes don't take away your curiosity and courage, they're one of the most honest teachers."
Alongside Casals and Yo-Yo Ma, Yeo also names Julian Steckel as a figure who has strongly influenced his imagination. Not as a model to copy, but as proof of how far the instrument can be driven. What he retains from his role models are not ready-made answers, but values: dedication, courage, and an open imagination.
And perhaps one thought sums it all up: music isn't about perfection, but about honest communication. In that tension between discipline and authenticity, Yoonsoo Yeo finds his voice—and lets the cello speak.
