Hai-Kyung Suh

Pianist Hai-Kyung Suh has won acclaim on four continents for her signature playing style, deeply rooted in the Russian Romantic tradition. Like few other artists before the public today, her combination of singing tone, rich color palette, and supreme virtuosity recalls the great pianists of yesteryear from Rachmaninoff and Hofmann to Cherkassky and Bolet.

Ms.  Suh's orchestral collaborators include Maestros Franz Welser-Möst, Riccardo Muti, Zdenĕk Mácal, Ivan Fischer, Myung-Whun Chung, Charles Dutoit, Gianluigi Gelmetti, Paolo Olmi and Moshe Atzmon, among many others. She has appeared as soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, London Philharmonic, Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, Nagoya Philharmonic, Osaka Philharmonic, Shanghai Philharmonic, Moscow Philharmonic, Moscow State Symphony, State Symphony Kapelle of Russia and other major orchestras.
 
In 2016, she recorded four Mozart piano concertos with Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, released by Deutsche Grammophon to critical acclaim. Ms. Suh’s landmark recordings include the complete Rachmaninoff (2010) and Tchaikovsky (2012) Piano Concertos with Aleksander Dmitriyev conducting the St. Petersburg Philharmonic.  She is the first woman to present all works for piano and orchestra of both composers.  A CD of Beethoven sonatas for Deutsche Grammophon and a disc of virtuoso solo music by Mussorgsky, Scriabin, and Stravinsky followed.  Further discography includes Etudes by Chopin and Liszt, two piano solo anthologies, “Jewels” and “Nacht und Träume”, a CD of piano music by present-day Asian composers and most recently, “Sound Painting,” a CD of music by Debussy, Lowell Liebermann, and Mussorgsky.  As a collaborative pianist, Dr. Suh can be heard on a recital CD with soprano Barbara Bonney.  Recently she completed a triumphant Asian tour, performing in the prominent concert halls of Seoul, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Tokyo.
 
In 2006, at the peak of her international career, Ms. Suh was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer and briefly withdrew from performing to fight the disease. Only five months after completing extensive chemo and radiation therapy, she returned to the stage, in remission, performing both Rachmaninoff Concerto No. 2 and No. 3 in Jan. 2008.
 
A native of South Korea, as a child prodigy she won first prize in a national competition at age 8 and the Grand Prix of the Ewha /KyungHyang Music Competition when she was 10. The Korean government honored her with its President's Medal twice, at 11 and 12 years of age.  She moved to New York for studies with Nadia Reisenberg at the Mannes College of Music and with Sascha Gorodnitzki at the Juilliard School, where she earned a D.M.A. degree. She garnered prizes at the William Kapell and Gina Bachauer competitions, and won the top prize awarded at both the Busoni International Piano Competition in Bolzano, Italy, and the Munich ARD International Piano Competition. As the first woman to win the Juilliard School’s William Petschek Award, she made her U.S. recital debut at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall.