Lozakovich: 'Music is a way of being — Korea is the highlight of my season'

It was at the 2023 French charity gala Le Gala des Pièces Jaunes. BLACKPINK — the world's biggest K-pop girl group — had been invited by Emmanuel Macron's wife, and their performance of "Shut Down" sampled Paganini's "La Campanella," a showpiece demanding diabolical technique. When Daniel Lozakovich played it alongside them, the BLINKs responded. Fans who had kept classical music at arm's length suddenly turned their attention to the young classical violinist who had shared the stage with BLACKPINK. Now he is coming to Korea. "The passion of Korean audiences is the highlight of every season for me," Lozakovich said.

Lozakovich is visiting Korea for the Classical Bridge International Music Festival 2026, which runs through June 12. He will perform Schumann's Violin Concerto at Lotte Concert Hall on June 11 and Beethoven's Triple Concerto at Seoul Arts Center concert hall on June 12. Beyond the festival, a duo recital with his longtime musical partner Hélène Mercier is also scheduled for June 14 at Incheon Art Center.

In a written interview ahead of his visit, Lozakovich said returning to Korea is "always a great joy and feels like the highlight of a season."

"I have made many dear friends in Korea now, and my heart is always full of warmth whenever I visit," he said. For these performances, he joins maestro Mikhail Pletnev and the Rachmaninoff International Orchestra, performing the Schumann Violin Concerto on June 11 and the Beethoven Triple Concerto on June 12.

The concerts mark a moment of deep artistic growth for Lozakovich. He spoke with admiration about Pletnev, with whom he recently recorded his Warner Classics debut album, calling him "magic itself — a mysterious artist with an otherworldly sense of harmony, time and color."

"In the sound Pletnev creates, there is architectural structure and sacred inspiration," he said. "Performing with him, who captures the creative force of the moment, I learn from an unknown world within myself and share a deep spiritual communion in which time seems to stand still."

The Schumann Violin Concerto sits at the heart of Lozakovich's musical mission. In past interviews he has said the work feels to him like Schumann's "farewell."

"I believe this piece has the deepest spiritual world of any violin concerto in the repertoire," he said. "I consider it my mission to place it at the center of the canon — it has not yet received the recognition it deserves."

For these performances, Lozakovich will go beyond the original concerto and explore a newly developed orchestration by Pletnev. The reworking stems from a conviction that the original scoring may have become somewhat overwrought, given that Schumann composed it by summoning the last of his mental strength near the end of his life. "Pletnev and I have prepared a completely new musical interpretation and approach," Lozakovich said.

"Music is not an effort for me — it is a way of being. It gives my life hope and, through healing and action, helps me understand what I am feeling."

For Lozakovich, music is life itself — the countless questions life raises and the answers found within them. "I make no special effort to deepen my musical expression," he said. "The joys and sorrows, the love and the search for sound that I encounter every day are my true teachers."

Even so, he has known periods of artistic stagnation. "I feel artistic or personal stagnation every day," he said, "but rather than trying to force my way through it, I move forward by holding onto hope and will — focusing on finding the spiritual secrets the composer has hidden inside the work."

For Lozakovich, the stage is a sacred space — a place to feel emotion most truthfully and intensely, to heal and to understand himself. That inner world and spiritual searching are fully captured in his new album "Lost to the World," released in March. The title draws on the Friedrich Rückert poem that inspired Gustav Mahler's song of the same name.

The album is a record of healing — of the genuine salvation and fierce hope Lozakovich found during a difficult period. He arranged Mahler's song for violin himself, a long-held dream, and it closes the album.

The record also stands out for its willingness to include repertoire not typically played on the violin. "What matters is not the instrument itself, but how you express your entire soul and heart through it — and what moves you," he said. "The essence of music is not bound by genre or medium."

His hope in releasing the album was that "people today, swept up in the superficial, might look up at the stars through this music and recover their own pure memories."

That journey was made possible by his longtime artistic partner, pianist Hélène Mercier. Mercier has performed alongside legendary masters including Rostropovich, Gitlis and Spivakov, and has shared a deep affinity with the violin since childhood.

"The way Mercier listens to music is very special — when we play together, a natural spiritual assimilation takes place," Lozakovich said. What truly binds the two is "a deep faith, a curiosity about the soul, and a firm friendship rooted in belief in the invisible world." Lozakovich records only with "those closest to my heart," and Mercier is precisely that — a presence that resonates deeply and inspires him. The two will bring a program of repertoire to Korean audiences in their duo recital on June 14, immediately following the festival.

Through these performances, Lozakovich wants to deliver a message to Korean classical audiences that goes beyond a sequence of notes. "It is a love of life," he said. "I want to awaken the inner impulse to seek sublime values that cannot be seen, and I want audiences to feel with their whole being that each of our individual souls is ultimately connected to a vast infinity that binds us all as one."