William Youn
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Critics call him “a true poet of the piano”: Pianist William Youn has established an international reputation, particularly for his subtlety, clarity, emotional insight and sensitive analysis. With a broad solo, chamber music and orchestral repertoire including Bach, Mozart, Schubert, Chopin and Rachmaninov as well as contemporary music he presents himself as a versatile and creative artist, who loves to share his enthusiasm for interpretation and discovery with colleagues and audiences alike. From Berlin to Seoul to New York, Youn has performed throughout the world with renowned orchestras such as the Cleveland Orchestra, the Munich Philharmonic, the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin, the Belgian National Orchestra, the Mariinsky Orchestra, Munich Chamber Orchestra and the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra in many of the world’s finest concert halls, including Wigmore Hall in London, the Konzerthaus in Vienna, the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, the Pierre Boulez Saal and the Konzerthaus in Berlin, the Tokyo Opera City Concert Hall, the Alte Oper in Frankfurt, deSingel in Antwerp, Walt Disney Hall in Los Angeles, and the Seoul Arts Center. Among his musical partners are conductors Myung-Whun Chung, Hannu Lintu, Pietari Inkinen, Kristiina Poska, Thomas Hengelbrock and Mario Venzago, the composers Isabel Mundry and Konstantia Gourzi as well as violist Nils Mönkemeyer and clarinetist Sabine Meyer. William Youn is also a frequent guest at international festivals such as Menuhin Festival in Gstaad, Schubertiade in Hohenems/Schwarzenberg, MITO Settembre Musica, Grafenegg Festival, Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, Rheingau Musik Festival, Heidelberger Frühling, Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Mozartfest Würzburg, Montréal Bach Festival, Schwetzinger SWR Festspiele and Davos Festival. In the 2024/25 season, William Youn will continue his successful Schubert cycles at the Schubertiade Hohenems/Schwarzenberg and in Tongyeong (South Korea), and he will again devote himself intensively to Bach's "Goldberg Variations" for a debut in Amsterdam. He will also perform Schumann’s Piano Concerto, Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 as well as Mozart’s Piano Concertos K271 “Jenamy” and K414 with the Bamberger Symphoniker, the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra and the Amsterdam Sinfonietta, and will collaborate with conductors Riccardo Minasi and Bernard Labadie for the first time. He will return to the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg for the world premiere performance of Manfred Trojahn’s “Trame Lunari” for viola, piano and chamber orchestra with Ensemble Resonanz, a co-commission of Elbphilharmonie and Mozartfest Würzburg for William Youn and Nils Mönkemeyer. William Youn has released numerous award-winning CDs. In November 2022, he completed his three-part complete recording of all Schubert piano sonatas for Sony Classical, which was highly praised by the international press, making it a "recording of the century" (Crescendo). He also recorded all Mozart sonatas on five albums for Oehms Classics. To mark the 150th birthday of Reynaldo Hahn, William Youn's first orchestral recording for Sony with piano concertos by Hahn and Nadia Boulanger as well as works by Gabriel Fauré was released by Sony in January 2024. It was honoured with the Diapason d'Or. Born in Seoul, William Youn discovered the piano in kindergarten and moved to Boston in the USA at the age of 13 to study at the New England Conservatory. Five years later, he transferred to the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media and received further musical impetus as a scholarship holder at the Piano Academy Lake Como, where he was influenced by artistic personalities such as Dmitri Bashkirov, Andreas Staier, William Grant Naboré and Menahem Pressler. As a member of the board of trustees, he is involved in the Wilhelm Kempff Cultural Foundation in Positano, where he also teaches regularly. |
