Rising star Hyun Jae Lim makes her MSO debut
David Lewellen
PUBLISHED
Tagged Under: 2026.27 Season, Classics, Violin
There’s a reason why Hyun Jae Lim is making a name for herself on the international violin circuit and studying for a master’s degree at the same time.
Lim will perform Samuel Barber’s violin concerto on the opening weekend of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra’s new season. It marks an MSO debut for the young Korean-American violinist, and it comes on a month’s notice in a business that usually sets schedules years in advance.
But Lim has, by necessity, followed an unusual career path. Her current pursuit of her master’s at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia came about because of her realistic fear that she might not have a performing career at all.
In 2020, just as she was finishing her bachelor’s degree, Lim suffered a severe car accident. After two years in the hospital and another two years in rehabilitative therapy, she picked up the violin again in 2024.
“After I left the hospital, I had a lot of adjustment to a new way of living, and music couldn’t be my priority,” she said. But friends and mentors encouraged her to at least try playing again. “I was looking for things I could do, and I thought that if I didn’t perform, I could still teach,” she said. “I always had a passion for teaching anyway. But to teach, you kind of have to play, so that made me start practicing.”
And she enrolled at Curtis, where she had done her undergraduate degree, partly with an eye toward making herself more qualified as an instructor. “Teaching also helps my playing,” she said. “I learn so much from other people. I always want to be a student, and I’m open to learning and developing in many different ways.”
But in the last two years, she began winning competitions and receiving solo engagements with major orchestras. “I probably would have applied for my doctoral degree by now, if it weren’t for all these concerts,” she said.
In fact, she was in Korea to perform with the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra when she got word that the MSO needed a soloist in one month after concertmaster Jinwoo Lee had to withdraw from his scheduled appearance because of an injury. “I was excited,” she said, “and then I started thinking about the realistic part. I think I do better on short notice. It’s stressful in a way, but the lack of time forces me to concentrate more, and that’s a learning experience.”
She and Bret Dorhout, the MSO’s vice president of artistic planning, discussed several possible works that could replace the scheduled Brahms concerto for violin and cello with Lee and principal cellist Susan Babini. (The hope is to perform the piece in a future season.)
They settled on the Barber concerto, which Lim was familiar with but has never performed in public. But she is not worried, and it has a positive side: “I don’t have to force myself to take a fresh look at it.”
The first two movements Lim describes as melodic and grounded in the beauty of the natural world. But the third movement is a relentless perpetual motion, and “there’s no holding back. It’s like a big takeoff.”
The concerto is “becoming more interesting the more I look into it,” she said. “It feels more special, because we share an alma mater, and it was premiered one building over from where I live now.” And Philadelphia, she said, “is like my second home.”
But as she practices to get a new concerto thoroughly under her fingers, she cannot ignore the basics. “Violin playing is strenuous in and of itself,” she said, and using the correct physical technique is important in order to avoid repetitive stress injuries.
“I’m still working on my posture with a therapist,” she said. “It’s made me think a lot about the nature of the instrument. It’s easy to overlook certain steps, but I find it very important to look at even the very basic things every single day.”
