| Biography | Kun-woo Paik (born March 10, 1946) is a South Korean pianist.
Kun Woo Paik was born in Seoul. He gave his first concert, aged 10, with the Korean National Orchestra, playing Edvard Grieg's Piano Concerto. In the following years he performed many important works in Korea, including several premieres such as Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. Later he studied in New York (Juilliard School), London, and in Italy with Rosina Lhevinne, Ilona Kabos, Guido Agosti and Wilhelm Kempff. Kun Woo Paik is also a laureate of the Naumburg and Busoni International Piano Competitions.
Over the years Kun Woo Paik has performed recitals in major musical centres such as the Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall and Berlin Philharmonie. He has also performed with such orchestras as the London Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra (Last Night of the Proms 1987), Pittsburgh Symphony, Russian National Orchestra, Saint Petersburg Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, Orchestre National de France, Ensemble Orchestral de Paris, Rai Torino, Warsaw Philharmonic, English Chamber Orchestra and Polish National Radio Orchestra, with such conductors as Mariss Jansons, Sir Neville Marriner, Lawrence Foster, Mikhail Pletnev, Dmitri Kitajenko, James Conlon, John Nelson and Eliahu Inbal. Kun Woo Paik is also a regular guest artist at major music festivals such as the Berlin Festwochen, Aix-en-Provence, La Roque d'Antheron, Colmar, Spoleto, Aldeburgh, "Mostly Mozart" and Ravinia Festivals, and has toured extensively in Australia, New Zealand, Asia and Italy.
His repertoire is very varied and comprises such rare works as Busoni's piano concerto, Fauré's Fantasy for piano and orchestra and Liszt's Fantasy on themes from Berlioz's Lelio. Kun Woo Paik also performs a wide selection of transcriptions by Liszt and Berlioz and is the dedicatee of Suk-Hi Kang's piano concerto.
Mr Paik has recorded the complete Prokofiev piano concertos with Antoni Wit/Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra for RCA (Diapason d'or in 1993), the complete Rachmaninoff piano concertos with Vladimir Fedoseyev / Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra (BMG), as well as several solo CDs of Scriabin, Liszt, Mussorgsky, Rachmaninoff, Mendelssohn piano music. In 2000 he signed an exclusive recording contract with Decca Classics. His first release featured the piano transcriptions of the organ works of J.S. Bach made by Ferrucio Busoni. Between 2005 and 2007, Decca recorded Paik in the complete piano sonatas of Ludwig van Beethoven.
Kun Woo Paik lives in Paris, is the Artistic Director of the Emerald Coast Music Festival in Dinard (France) and was made "Chevalier de l'ordre des arts et des lettres" by the French Government in 2000. In September 2000 he was the first Korean artist to be officially invited to perform in China.
Paik has resided in Paris, France with his wife, actress Yoon Jeong-hee since 1974. Yoon is a star of the late 1960s commonly referred to as one of "The First Troika" by the South Korean news media, along with other two actresses in rivalry, Moon Hee, and Nam Jeong-im. The couple has a daughter who is a violinist. |