Sunwook Kim

19 year-old Sunwook Kim came to international recognition when he won the prestigious Leeds International Piano Competition in 2006. The competition’s youngest winner for 40 years, as well as its first Asian winner, his performance for the finals of Brahms’s Concerto No.1 with Mark Elder attracted unanimous praise from the press, and led to concerto engagements with some of the UK’s finest orchestras as well as recitals throughout Europe.

Born in Seoul, Korea, in 1988, Sunwook Kim began the piano at the age of 3. He gave his debut recital aged just 10 at the Kumho Prodigy Series in Seoul, and this was followed by his concerto debut two years later. Since then he has been a regular guest of Korea’s finest orchestras, including the Seoul Philharmonic and the KBS Symphony, both at home and on tour internationally.

Over the past season he has appeared with the London Philharmonic (Vassily Sinaisky), Hallé Orchestra (Mark Elder), BBC National Orchestra of Wales (Tadaaki Otaka), as well as tours in Korea with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France (Myung-Whun Chung), Budapest Festival Orchestra (Ivan Fischer) and the BBC Philharmonic (Gianandrea Noseda).

Highlights among recital appearances include the Beethovenfest Bonn, Klavier-Festival Ruhr and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festspiele in Germany, the Aspen Music Festival in the USA, the Duszniki Zdrój International Chopin Festival in Poland as well as the Tongyeong International Music Festival and Kumho Rising Stars Series in Korea.

Sunwook Kim’s forthcoming engagements include debut recitals in Paris, Brussels, London, Vancouver and New York, as well as concertos with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Opera North, Lausanne Chamber Orchestra and the Seoul Philharmonic.

Sunwook Kim graduated from the Korean National University of Arts in February 2008, where he has been a student of Daejin Kim since 1999. Besides Leeds, international awards include the first prize at the 2004 Ettlingen Competition (Germany) and the 2005 Clara Haskil Competition (Switzerland). In Korea he was the first winner of the Daewon Artist of the Year Award (2005) and also received the Kumho Musician of the Year Award (2007).