Yeol Eum Son

Poetic elegance, an innate feeling for expressive nuance and the power to project bold, dramatic contrasts are among the arresting attributes of Yeol Eum Son’s pianism. She is known for her refined artistry and breathtaking technical control as well as her strikingly wide-ranging repertoire, from Bach and Mozart to Shchedrin and Kapustin. In high demand around the world as recitalist, concerto soloist and chamber musician, she continues to deepen her artistry through collaborations with many of today’s leading conductors, including Antonio Pappano, Roberto González-Monjas, Jonathon Heyward, Ryan Bancroft, Maxim Emelyanychev, Jaime Martin, Andrew Manze, Alexander Shelley and Omer Meir Welber, among others.

Following a very intense 25/26 concert season, in summer 2025, Yeol Eum Son made her New York orchestral debut with the Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center as part of Summer for the City. She also debuted at the Colorado Music Festival following a successful collaboration with the Colorado Symphony earlier in the season. Further highlights of the 2025-2026 season include debut collaborations with the Danish National, Swedish Radio, London Philharmonic, and São Paulo State Symphony. Return collaborations this season include appearances at the Barbican Centre in London with the BBC Symphony (with performances in the UK and South Korea), Scottish Chamber and in Asia with the Singapore Symphony.

Recent highlights of Yeol Eum’s numerous orchestral collaborations in North America and Canada include the Los Angeles and Naples Philharmonics; Baltimore, Colorado, Detroit and St. Louis Symphonies; Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and the NAC Orchestra in Ottawa; and Internationally, she has appeared with, among others, the LSO, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Aurora Orchestra, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Dresden Philharmonic, Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne, Konzerthausorchester Berlin, NDR Radiophilharmonie, Finnish Radio Symphony, Helsinki Philharmonic, and Oslo Philharmonic. Further afield, Yeol Eum’s orchestral appearances include frequent collaborations with the Sydney, Melbourne, West Australian, Tasmanian Symphony Orchestras and Auckland Philharmonia. As a recitalist, Yeol Eum’s recent appearances include the Edinburgh International Festival in Scotland, International Chopin Festival at Duszniki-Zdrój in Poland, Mänttä Music Festival in Finland, Rosendal and Risør Chamber Music Festivals in Norway.

Over the past decade Yeol Eum has achieved global acclaim for her interpretations of Mozart’s piano concertos. In 2016 she joined the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields and Sir Neville Marriner for a radiant interpretation of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 in what proved to be the conductor’s final recording. The YouTube video of her performance of this work at the International Tchaikovsky Competition has been viewed almost 23 million times, thought to be a record figure for any live Mozart work on the platform.

In addition to Yeol Eum’s intense performance diary, she has an active recording schedule. Her most recent releases on Naïve records are her albums “Ravel: Piano Concertos – Bach/Wittgenstein”, “Love Music” with violinist Svetlin Roussev, and a stunning box set of Mozart’s Complete Piano Sonatas. Yeol Eum has also recorded works by Berg, Prokofiev, and Stravinsky and has a disc devoted to the piano music of Nikolai Kapustin. Her complete discography can be explored here.

Born in Wonju, South Korea, in 1986, Yeol Eum Son received her first piano lessons at the age of three-and-a-half. She was among the prize winners at the International Tchaikovsky Competition for Young Musicians in 1997 and won the Oberlin International Piano Competition two years later. She attracted international attention when she won second prize and the Best Chamber Music Performance at the 2009 Van Cliburn Competition. She secured her position among the most gifted artists of her generation at the 2011 International Tchaikovsky Competition, where she won the Silver Medal, among other honors. Yeol Eum studied at Korea National University of Arts and continued her training with Professor Arie Vardi at the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover.