Sung-Won Yang offered performances loaded with imagination, technical brilliance and pinpoint accuracy in intonation. Contours were skillfully shaped, scalar nuances were crafted with exquisite care and the whole rang with a resounding richness.
-Washington Post-
…an immensely accomplished artist with a huge sound and a way of playing that is lyrical and intense without a hint of preciousness.
-The Sunday Times-
It takes a player of Sung-Won Yang’s Technical Brilliance and expressive boldness to make one feel The Kodaly’s Solo Sonata’s full grandeur.
-Gramophone-
Cellist Sung-Won Yang has performed throughout the world as a soloist and chamber musician. He has given solo and chamber music concerts in prestigious venues as Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center in New York, the Salle Pleyel and Théâtre des Champs Elysées in Paris, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Terrace Theater at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, the Musikverein in Vienna, the Opera City Hall in Tokyo, Symphony Hall in Osaka and the National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing.
His recitals have also led to other leading cities, such as London, Rome, Frankfurt, Madrid, Prague, Helsinki, Boston, Seattle, Tel Aviv, Shanghai, Sydney and many others.
While exclusive artist for EMI-Korea, his album entirely devoted to Kodály, was “the editor’s choice of the month” Gramophone Magazine, and “critic’s choice of the year” Gramophone Magazine in the UK (December 2003), nominated for best solo album to Edison Awards in the Netherlands. His other recordings for EMI, are works by Rachmaninoff and Chopin, the complete J.S. Bach’s suites for cello solo, and the complete Beethoven Sonatas and Variations for Cello and Piano. These recordings have all received with great response and success from music lovers and critics alike.
He records for Universal Music/Decca since 2009, his recent recordings are Dvorák Cello Concerto with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra(Cond; Znedek Macal) and Trio Dumky (2010); an album combining jazz, Latin music and la variété française with the ensemble Les Bons Becs ‘Musical get away’ (2011); Beethoven’s ‘Archduke’ trio and Op. 70 No. 2, (2013) with trio Owon which he formed with Violinist Olivier Charlier and Pianist Emmanuel Strosser; and the complete works by Brahms and Schumann for cello and piano with Enrico Pace (2014), complete Beethoven trio (Trio Owon 2015) Sung-Won Yang’s 2nd recording of Bach Suites for Cello Solo for Universal Music/Decca (2017) Complete works for Cello and Piano by F. Lizst and Chopin Sonata with Pianist Enrico Pace.(2018) His Upcoming recordings are Elgar and Schumann Cello Concerti with London Symphony Orchestra with Maestro Hans Graf as well as complete Beethoven for Cello and Piano with Enrico Pace due to be released in 2022 and 2023.
Sung-Won Yang has collaborated with great musicians such as Christoph Eschenbach, MyungWhun Chung, Peter Eötvös, Johannes Kalitzke, Laurent Petitgirard, and Pascal Devoyon. His interpretations of the Cello Concerto by Saint-Saëns, the Brahms Double Concerto, and Variations on a Rococo Theme by Tchaikovsky with the Orchestre Symphonic Français were broadcast by French TV in France and throughout Europe on Eurovision. In addition, France Music, NHK (Japan), and KBS (Korea) among other radios have broadcast many of his live concerts. A regular performer of contemporary music, Sung-Won Yang premiered in Asia Peter Eötvös’ concerto grosso with Seoul Philharmonic, with the composer conducting, and in Austria with the RFO, Austrian Radio Symphoniker.
Born in Korea, Sung-Won Yang graduated from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris and was assistant to Janos Starker at Indiana University in the United States. He is regularly invited to be in the jury of the International Competitions such as International String Quartet competition in Banff, Canada, the International Cello Competition André Navarra in France, the International Cello Competition Cassado Japan and the Tongyeong International Competition in Korea. Recipient of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French government, he is currently a professor of cello at the School of Music Yonsei University in Seoul, visiting professor at the Royal Academy of Music and Artistic Director of the Festival Beethoven à Beaune, in France, as well as Music In PyeongChang Festival.
In 2009 Sung-Won Yang creates the Trio Owon with violinist Olivier Charlier et pianist Emmanuel Strosser, from the merger of three musicians from the Paris Conservatory, united by the same passion for chamber music. Their goal is to share with its audience a fully integrated vision of music, committed by a group without boundaries, resulting from a rich and varied artistic inspiration. Through concerts and recordings in England, France, and Korea, Trio Owon already stated its identity made of passion and maturity, like the painter whose name they bear. Painter of Nature, emotion and poetry, OHWON Jang Seung Up, embodies for the trio Owon the universal dimension of Art. Contemporary of Brahms, but from a completely different aesthetic world, it symbolizes the quest of an ideal result of tradition and renewal in the nineteenth century Korea. His story brought to the cinema (Strokes of Fire, prized at Festival de Cannes in 2002), reveals the doubts and commitments of an undaunted artist. Beyond the anecdote (his name’s sound summarizes some of our three first names…) here it symbolizes the osmosis between knowledge and modernity.
Sung-Won Yang plays Pirastro “Passione” strings.