On February 13, 2026, Junhee Kim walked onto the stage of the Samsung Performing Arts Theater in Makati City to do something no pianist had done before: give the world premiere of a Mozart concerto that had sat unfinished for nearly 250 years.
The work — Mozart's Concerto for Violin and Piano in D major, begun in 1778 — survives as only 120 bars of a single movement. For Concert VI: Romanza, the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra's composer-in-residence Jeffrey Ching completed it, and Kim, together with Polish violinist Bartek Nizioł, brought the finished concerto to life for the first time under conductor Maestro Grzegorz Nowak.
The premiere was no accident of programming. Kim and Ching had already been working together: in 2025, Kim commissioned the composer for a reimagined version of Pergolesi's Stabat Mater with piano, premiering it at a festival. The Mozart-Ching concerto extended that collaboration onto one of the year's most anticipated Manila stages.
Framed as a Valentine's-season program, Romanza surrounded the premiere with Wieniawski's Second Violin Concerto and Ravel's shimmering Daphnis et Chloé: Suite No. 2 — an evening built entirely around the language of romance.
Read the concert notes →
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