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Shiyeon Sung and Sunwook Kim in Korea-UK Year of Culture Closing Concert

A celebratory concert to round off the performance strand of UK/Korea year of cultural exchange 2017-18.

Late change: Shiyeon Sung replaces Han-Na Chang as conductor as Ms Chang is indisposed. Programme remains unchanged.

Philharmonia Orchestra – Korea-UK Year of Culture: Closing Concert

7:30 pm, Thu 14 Jun 2018
Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre
£11 – £55 (MULTI-BUY DISCOUNT) | Buy tickets here

Performers
Han-Na Chang conductor
Sunwook Kim pianist
Philharmonia Orchestra
Repertoire
Rossini: Overture, William Tell
Grieg: Piano Concerto
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No.5

Han-Na Chang has been called ‘a diminutive, dynamic firebrand‘ (The Guardian) with ‘an extraordinary sense of fearless adventure‘ (The Times).

She comes together with pianist Sunwook Kim for the celebratory closing concert of the 2017/18 Korea-UK Season.

The timeless, towering chords of Grieg’s Piano Concerto lead into the turbulence of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony. In his own words, Tchaikovsky’s Symphony marked his ‘complete resignation before Fate’. ‘Fate’ winds unrelenting through each movement, interrupting a love song, cutting in on a waltz and finally taking on the form of a march into the blazing finale.

This concert is presented in partnership with the Philharmonia Orchestra as part of the 2017-2018 Korea-UK Season.

The 2017/18 season marks Han-Na Chang’s first year as the Artistic Leader and Chief Conductor of the Trondheim Symfoniorkester.

Han-Na Chang

Han-Na Chang

As a guest conductor, she has worked with the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra, Staatskapelle Dresden, Gothenburg Symphony, WDR Sinfonieorchester KOln, Bamberger Sym-phoniker, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, the Cincinnati, St Louis, India-napolis and Seattle Symphony orchestras, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Orchestra del Teatro di San Car-lo di Napoli amongst others. Chang made an acclaimed conducting debut at the BBC Proms in September 2014, and held the post of Principal Guest Conductor of the Trondheim Symfoniorkester from the 2013/14 to the 2016/17 season.

Her professional music career started at the age of 11, when she won the Rostropovich International Cello Competition in 1994. Chang went on to perform with orchestras such as the Berliner Philharmoniker, New York and Los Angeles Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, Sinfonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, MOnchner Philharmoniker, Philadelphia Orchestra, l’Orchestre de Paris. Filarmon-ica della Scala, Orchestra dell’Accademia Nationale di Santa Cecilia, The Cleveland Orchestra and the Chicago, Boston and San Francisco Symphony orchestras. Her recordings, exclusively for the former EMI Classics, have received ECHO Klassik, Caecilia and Cannes Classical awards, as well as a Gramophone Concerto of the Year accolade among others, and remain world-wide bestsellers.

Han-Na Chang studied Philosophy at Harvard University and currently serves as the Roving Goodwill Ambassador for the Korean Red Cross.

“Chang is graceful, strong, charismatic and deeply musical, and she seemed to have total rapport with the musicians of the orchestra….Chang, conducting without a score, showed an impressive command of the material from the opening phrases to the dynamic finale, with a thrilling read-ing…. she kept firm and inspired control of the orchestra, and of the music’s direction, throughout the symphony. The audience rewarded the performers with a thunder-ous and well-deserved ovation. Chang’s a conductor on the way up.” -St Louis Post-Dispatch. November 2016

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Sunwook Kim

Sunwook Kim

Sunwook Kim came to international recognition when he won the prestigious Leeds International Piano Competition in 2006, aged just 18, becoming the competition’s youngest winner for 40 years, as well as its first Asian winner. His performance of Brahms’s Concerto No.1 with the Halle Orchestra and Sir Mark Elder in the competition’s finals attracted unanimous praise from the press. Since then, he has established a reputation as one of the finest pianists of his generation, appearing as a concerto soloist in the subscription series of some of the world’s leading orchestras, including the London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Berlin Radio Symphony, NOR Sinfonieorchester Hamburg, Finnish Radio Symphony, Philharmonia Orchestra, London Philharmonic, Radio-France Philharmonic, NHK Symphony, Halle Orchestra, and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra for his BBC Proms debut in Summer 2014.

Recitals highlights to date include regular appearances in the “Piano 4 Etoiles” series at Salle Pleyel in Paris, as well as debuts at the Wigmore Hall, the London International Piano Series (Queen Elizabeth Hall), Stockholm Konserthuset, Teatro Colon Buenos Aires, La Roque d’Anther-on International Piano Festival in France, Kioi Has in Tokyo, Symphony Hall Osaka, Brussels Clara Festival, Beethoven-Haus Bonn, Klavier-Festival Ruhr and Mecklen-burg-Vorpommern Festspiele.

Sunwook Kim’s debut recital recordings on the Accentus label include two discs of Beethoven sonatas, Franck’s Prelude, choral et fugue and Brahms’s Sonata No.3. He has also recorded two concerto discs (Beethoven’s ‘Emperor concerto and Un-suk Chin’s piano concerto) with the Seoul Philharmonic and Myung-Whun Chung for Deutsche Grammophon.

“Kim has an unerring sense of underlying harmonic tension and tonal design, plus the skill to apply colour and blend accordingly, which gives his playing both eloquence and architectural solidity and saves him from having to rely on gimmicky exaggeration to make his mark.” – Gramophone, May 2017

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(automatically generated) We didn’t review this event, but Young-Jin Hur did, here.

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