Yeol Eum Son

Yeol Eum Son (born May 2, 1986, in Wonju, South Korea) is a world renowned South Korean classical pianist.

She is particularly esteemed as an interpreter of the Classical era of composers, especially Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, as well as such later composers as Mendelssohn, Schumann, Liszt, Rachmaninoff and Ravel.

Son regularly performs as soloist with prominent orchestras and eminent conductors.

Son took her first piano lesson at the age of three and a half.

She made a recital debut on Kumho Prodigy Concert Series in July 1998.

At the age of twelve, she started studying with pianist Kim Dae-jin.

At age sixteen, she entered the Korea National University of Arts to continue her piano studies.

At the age of 18, she recorded the complete Chopin Etudes (Op. 10 and Op. 25) for a CD on the Universal Music Label.

Son first drew international attention in October 2004 at age 18 when she appeared as a soloist performing Liszt Piano Concerto No. 1 with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Lorin Maazel on their Asia tour in Seoul, Daejeon, and Tokyo.

Son had also won the Bronze Medal at the Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition (2005).

Son has performed as soloist with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, BBC Philharmonic, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Aurora Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Mariinsky Orchestra, Russian State Symphony Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern, NDR Radiophilharmonie, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Philharmonie Zuidnederland, L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Basel Symphony Orchestra, Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra, RTVE Symphony Orchestra (Orquesta Sinfónica de Radio Televisión Española) Madrid, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, NHK Symphony Orchestra, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, KBS Symphony Orchestra, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Seattle Symphony Orchestra, San Diego Symphony, Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Singapore Symphony Orchestra and many others.

Son will perform the Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 2 with the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa in 2024, and the Mozart Piano Concerto No. 22 in Toronto with the National Arts Centre Orchestra in May 2025 at Roy Thomson Hall as part of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra regular season series.

Son has collaborated with distinguished conductors such as Lorin Maazel, Sir Neville Marriner, Valery Gergiev, Sir Antonio Pappano, Jaap van Zweden, Yuri Bashmet, Vasily Petrenko, Omer Meir Wellber, Edo de Waart, Susanna Mälkki, Ivan Fischer, Mikko Franck, Karel Mark Chichon, Myung-whun Chung, Krzysztof Urbański, Alexander Shelley, James Conlon, Jun Märkl, Lawrence Foster, Dmitri Kitayenko, Ludovic Morlot, Andrew Manze, Pietari Inkinen, Ryan Bancroft, Jonathon Heyward, Joana Carneiro, Giordano Bellincampi and many others.

In 2006, she began studying with Arie Vardi at the Hochschule für Musik und Theatre, in Hannover, Germany, where she currently resides.

Son again performed with Maazel and the New York Philharmonic when they returned to the Seoul Arts Center in February 2008, this time as soloist for Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 2.

She had earlier won the Silver Medal at the Thirteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2009.

Son was awarded the Silver Medal at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in 2011.

At the Tchaikovsky Competition she also received the Best Chamber Concerto Performance and the Best Performance of the Commissioned Work prizes.

The video of her performance of the Mozart Piano Concerto No. 21 at the Tchaikovsky Competition has received an estimated 23 million online views, considered a record for a live Mozart performance.

Son's recording in 2016 of the Mozart Piano Concerto No. 21 with Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields was the final recording of Sir Neville and has been widely praised.

Son composed her own cadenzas for this concerto.

Son performed the Mozart Piano Concerto No. 21 in Seoul in 2017 as a memorial to Sir Neville Marriner.

The recording was released on the Onyx label in 2018.

Marriner and Son had planned to record the complete Mozart concertos.

In 2019, Son made her debut at the BBC Proms festival at the Royal Albert Hall performing the Mozart Piano Concerto No. 15 with the BBC Philharmonic conducted by Omer Meir Wellber.

In November 2020, Son performed the Beethoven Kreuzer Sonata with violinist Svetlin Roussev.

In September 2021, Son performed the Beethoven Emperor Concerto with Pietari Inkinen and the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern in a broadcast event.

In November 2022, Son performed the Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 4 with the NDR Radiophilharmonie conducted by Andrew Manze in a broadcast event.

In that same month, she performed the Ravel Piano Concerto for the Left Hand with Pablo Urbina conducting the Orquesta Sinfónica y Coro RTVE in Madrid.

Son had performed the Ravel Piano Concerto in G Major with the same orchestra in the previous season with Pablo González as conductor.

In the season 2022-2023, she was artist in residence with Residentie Orkest (The Hague Philharmonic), Amare concert hall The Hague and Royal Conservatory of The Hague and recorded the Ravel piano concertos with the orchestra.

In December 2022 Son performed the Mendelssohn Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jonathon Heyward.

In February 2023 Son's recordings of the complete Mozart Piano Sonatas were released on the Naive label.

These met with enthusiastic critical response and the release was named Classic FM Album of the Week.

Son participated in the 2023 Rosendal Chamber Music Festival in Norway which featured chamber music of Brahms.

She collaborated with violinist James Ehnes in the festival's opening performance, Brahms Violin and Piano Sonata No. 1. Later in the festival she performed the Brahms Clarinet and Piano Sonata No. 1 with clarinetist Sharon Kam, the Brahms Piano Trio No. 2 Op. 87 with violinist Ehnes and cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason, and the Brahms F-A-E Scherzo for violin and piano with the violinist Svetlin Roussev.

Son gave a recital at the 2023 Edinburgh Festival performing the Beethoven Hammerklavier Sonata in an acclaimed BBC broadcast concert.

To celebrate the 150th anniversary of Rachmaninoff's birth, Son and the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern conducted by Pietari Inkinen toured in September 2023 in eight concerts mostly in South Korea featuring the Rachmaninoff Third Piano Concerto.

On 28 October 2023 Son performed Liszt's Totentanz with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Antonio Pappano.

One critic wrote of Son's achievement with Pappano and the LSO that "...we heard Yeol Eum Son in Liszt’s Totentanz. “Tour de force” could equally have been its title, for it makes huge demands on the soloist. It seemed, however, that Yeol Eum Son hardly noticed, so complete was her control over Liszt’s taxing variations. It was a superb performance."