London Korean Links

Covering things Korean in London and beyond since 2006

Korean soloists at the 2026 BBC Proms

Three Korean soloists perform concertos at this year’s Proms, including Yunchan Lim who opens the festival. 17 July (First Night): Yunchan Lim (piano) Dalia Stasevska and massed BBC forces launch the 2026 season with an American accent. The widescreen vision of Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man zooms in to teeming city streets in Gershwin’s … [Read More]

Inmo Yang (violin): Prom debut

An all-French programme whose first half celebrates the bright, exotic colours conjured by Bizet, who died 150 years ago. As well as a suite from his incidental music for ‘The Girl from Arles’, we hear the fantasy for violin and orchestra featuring music – including the famous ‘Habanera’ – from his best-loved opera, reimagined with explosive virtuosity … [Read More]

Yunchan Lim Plays Rachmaninov at the Proms

After a ‘dazzling’ Proms debut last year, pianist and global phenomenon Yunchan Lim returns, joining Kazuki Yamada and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra for Rachmaninov’s final piano concerto. Rich in scope and ambition, tinged with the jazz rhythms and harmonies of the composer’s new homeland, it’s a technical tour de force. Musical visions from … [Read More]

Yunchan Lim plays Chopin at the Albert Hall

Frederic Chopin took the piano and transformed it into the ultimate vehicle for the Romantic imagination. There’s a burning fire beneath the poetry of his music, or as one contemporary put it ‘cannons hidden in flowers’. In the hands of Yunchan Lim – who in 2022 became the youngest-ever winner of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition … [Read More]

Yunchan Lim plays Beethoven’s Emperor in Prom debut

Yunchan Lim makes his Proms debut with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Paavo Järvi, performing Beethoven’s final piano concerto, the ‘Emperor’. Bookending the Prom are Bruckner’s First Symphony and Estonian composer Erkki-Sven Tüür’s Aditus In 2022 Yunchan Lim became the youngest ever winner of the Van Cliburn Competition, America’s most distinguished contest for outstanding pianists. … [Read More]

Bomsori Kim plays Bruch in Proms debut

South Korean star violinist Bomsori makes her Proms debut with Bruch’s much-loved First Violin Concerto – the ‘richest’ and ‘most seductive’ of all the concertos for the instrument, according to 19th-century virtuoso Joseph Joachim. The folk music that runs through Bruch’s concerto also pulses through Brahms’s lively Hungarian Dances and Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra – … [Read More]

Seong-Jin Cho plays Prokofiev at the Proms

The second of three Proms this year featuring Korean performers: Prom 48: Rachmaninov, Prokofiev + Silvestri 19:30 Sat 24 Aug 2019 Royal Albert Hall Tickets £9.50 to £52 (plus booking fee) | Book tickets Seong-Jin Cho: piano BBC Symphony Orchestra Cristian Măcelaru: conductor Constantin Silvestri: Three Pieces for strings (11 mins) Sergei Prokofiev: Piano Concerto … [Read More]

Yeol Eum Son plays Mozart at the Proms

The first of three Proms this year featuring Korean performers: Prom 7: Schumann, Schoenberg, Ben-Haim and Mozart 19:30 Tue 23 Jul 2019 Royal Albert Hall Tickets £7.50 to £41 (plus booking fee) | Book tickets Yeol Eum Son: piano BBC Philharmonic Omer Meir Wellber: conductor Programme Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 15 in B … [Read More]

Joo Yeon Sir in broadcast premier and Albert Hall debut

Last November, violinist Joo Yeon Sir won the Arts Club Karl Jenkins Classical Music Award, held in association with the radio station Classic FM. The award was launched in 2013 to identify the most exciting young performers in Britain. According to Classic FM, the “candidates were judged based upon their technique, individualism, musicality, interpretation, communication … [Read More]

The Seoul Philharmonic – a young orchestra with “an extraordinary sense of adventure”

On 27 August, the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra made its Proms debut, the first Korean orchestra to play at the famous music festival. At the Pre-Prom talk earlier that evening across the road at the Royal College of Music, Michael Fine and Hyunjin Park of the Seoul Philharmonic, and Dr Haekyung Eom of Liverpool University, talked … [Read More]

Sarah Chang plays Bruch

Korean American violinist Sarah Chang will be appearing in a programme of popular classics at the Albert Hall tomorrow night in a charity concert put on by Classic FM. Alex James from Blur will be guest conducting the Northern Sinfonia orchestra in the theme from the Onedin Line. Chang will be playing everyone’s favourite fiddle … [Read More]

Concert Review: Unsuk Chin at the BBC Proms — A new work enters the Cello repertoire

Last Thursday (13 August) saw the world premiere of the cello concerto by Unsuk Chin, a BBC commission. Chin, who was born in Korea in 1961, has been composer-in-residence for both the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. She is a careful worker: the new work was originally scheduled for the 2007 Prom … [Read More]