One of the most exciting young conductors on the international scene, Korean conductor Shi-Yeon Sung has emerged from a string of great successes over the past season. Last September Ms. Sung won first prize at the 2006 International Conductors’ Competition Sir Georg Solti. This was quickly followed by an invitation from James Levine and the Boston Symphony to become their new assistant conductor beginning in the 2007-08 season. The most recent success occurred at the Bamberg Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition where she achieved top prize in the 2007 competition.
Previous accolades included winning the 2004 conducting competition for the Conducting Forum of the German Music Council, and the 2004 Female Conductors’ Competition in Solingen, Germany.
This season Ms. Sung will make her Korean conducting debut opening the season for the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra at the Seoul Arts Center. In the next seasons she will also make her subscription debuts with the Boston Symphony at Symphony Hall and at the Tanglewood Music Festival, the Rotterdam Philharmonic, the Milwaukee Symphony, the Elgin Symphony, and the Heidelberg Philharmonische Orchester. She will make additional appearances with the Bamberger Symphoniker and the Frankfurter Museumsorchester.
Recent conducting engagements have included the Berliner Sinfonie-Orchester, the Berliner Symphoniker, the Nürnberger Symphoniker, the Bergischen Symphoniker, the Thüringische Philharmonie Gotha-Suhl, the Philharmonie Südwestfalen, the Landesorchester Nordrhein-Westfalen, the Neubrandenburger Philharmonie and the Brandenburger Symphoniker.
In 2002, Shi-Yeon Sung gave her formal conducting debut conducting Die Zauberflöte in Berlin followed by assisting posts in productions at the Theater Görlitz, Hans Otto Theater in Potsdam. She has since directed numerous opera projects. In her capacity as permanent guest conductor, Ms. Sung regularly directs the opening concert of the Summer Festival Kapfenburg (supported by DaimlerChrysler) and from February 2003 to February 2006, Ms. Sung was chief conductor of the Capella Academica, the symphony orchestra of the Humboldt University Berlin.
In August 2006, Ms. Sung began advanced conducting studies under Professor Jorma Panula at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, Sweden. From 2001 to 2006, she undertook Kapellmeister and orchestral conducting studies with Prof. Rolf Reuter at the Hanns Eisler School of Music in Berlin, Germany where she concluded her studies in August 2006 with a Diploma in Conducting.
In 2001, Ms. Sung received her Master’s Degree in Piano Performance at the University of the Arts (UDK) in Berlin, Germany as a student of Laszlo Simon and Erich Andreas. Prior to this, she studied with Eckart Heiligers in Zurich. Ms. Sung has participated in numerous master classes, with Dietrich Fischer- Dieskau and Sergej Dorensky, among others.
Born in 1975 in Pusan, South Korea, Shi-Yeon Sung began playing the piano at the age of 4. She took part in numerous youth competitions, winning various prizes, and gave her first solo concert at the age of 13.
