Has Clara-Jumi Kang reached her prime?

Violinist Clara-Jumi Kang opens an 11-city Korean recital tour with pianist-conductor Kim Sun-wook at the Sejong Arts Center on May 19, the duo's first joint appearance in Korea in five years.

Apart from one Monday, when Korea's performance halls are typically closed, the duo will perform every night of the tour — a marathon pace the musicians requested themselves.

"We told the presenters we didn't want a day off," Kang told reporters during a press conference on Thursday in Seoul. "On orchestra tours and on recital tours, I feel I grow during the tour itself. The playing doesn't necessarily get better, but the energy goes up. If you take a day off, things can lose momentum, so we wanted to do it in one stretch."

The duo's previous run together was seven dates. "Eleven is a challenge, but I'm curious how much our partnership will have grown by the end," Kang said.

The Korean program traces the history of the violin sonata from the classical period to the 20th century, with works by Beethoven, Respighi, Mieczyslaw Weinberg and Strauss.

The program, Kang said, is built on her trust in Kim. Four sonatas — most of them orchestral in character — is an unusual scale for a violin recital, and it gives the pianist more to carry than a standard recital program does.

"What Kim is doing on this stage is bigger than the role a pianist usually plays in a violin recital," Kang said. "Entrusting a pianist with four sonatas of that orchestral character takes real trust on its own. And only when the partnership is that close does the storytelling come through."

She added that Kim has changed a lot since they last toured, as he spends more time at the podium.

"When he plays now, the orchestral lines come through in a way that gives me chills," Kang said. "Our music will be bigger and wider than it was in 2021."

The opening Beethoven sonata is familiar ground for the duo, which recorded the complete cycle in 2020. The middle goes darker — Respighi's Violin Sonata, written in 1917 during the Battle of Caporetto, and Mieczyslaw Weinberg, the Polish-born Jewish composer who fled the Nazis and settled in Moscow with Shostakovich's help — before closing with a young, heroic Strauss sonata.

"Even when the music is dark, I believe the end is always love and hope," Kang said.

Kang said her instrument suited the program. Since 2023 she has played a 1702 Stradivarius, known as the "Tunis," on loan from Kia.

"The sound of the instrument is masculine," Kang said. "It has a boiling quality from below, which suits Shostakovich and Britten."

The darker register, she added, fits much of the heavier repertoire on the current tour. "Since I started playing it, my repertoire has gotten wider and more adventurous."

The change has been about more than sound for Kang.

"I performed in a tuxedo as a child," she said. "I didn't put on a dress until I was 17 or 18. I've never thought of myself as particularly feminine, and I lived that way. In my 20s and early 30s there was a real gap between how I saw myself and how people saw me. I figured time would take care of it."

She said it has.

"As you get older, you become more comfortable with your true self and less afraid to show it. I can show more of who I actually am now, and it comes through better than it used to."

Kang said she feels she is at a physical peak — but asked, with a laugh, not to be called in her prime as a musician.

"I'd rather my prime arrive in my 50s — or last 30 years," she said. Violinists, she noted, have historically had shorter performing careers than pianists or conductors. "I'd like to change that. Even in my 70s, even without this physical peak, I want to keep performing without injury."

Her approach, she said, is patience. "I just do what's in front of me. I'm going to be playing for another 30 or 40 years. The point is to build, layer by layer. I tell younger musicians: It's not about how fast you run. Your repertoire is your asset, and not getting worn out is your asset."

Looking past the Korean tour, the duo brings the program — minus Beethoven — to the Verbier Festival in August. And later that month, Kang takes a stage 27 years in the making.

At age 12, she had been scheduled to play with Daniel Barenboim and the Chicago Symphony when a finger injury a month before forced her to withdraw. In August, she will play Beethoven's Violin Concerto with Barenboim at Germany's Rheingau Music Festival.

"For a long time I assumed it would never happen, especially given his health," Kang said. "Now that it's right in front of me, it's hard to put into words."