Soyoung Yoon

The ex-Bückeburg Guadagnini that Soyoung Yoon plays was made in Turin in 1773; she came through the competition circuit and stayed on the concert platform, with first prizes at the Menuhin, the Wieniawski, the Oistrakh competition in Moscow and the Tibor Varga, and laureate places at the Queen Elisabeth, the Tchaikovsky and Indianapolis. Born in South Korea in 1984, she studied at the Korea National University of Arts, then with Zakhar Bron in Cologne, and completed her training at the Zurich University of the Arts. She has recorded the Sibelius and Tchaikovsky concertos with the Gorzów Philharmonic, Berlioz's Rêverie et caprice with the Basel Symphony Orchestra, and Piazzolla's Four Seasons and the Mendelssohn Double Concerto with the Korean Chamber Orchestra. She leads the Utopia orchestra from the first desk, gives masterclasses, and sits on competition juries, the Menuhin and the Prague Spring among them. Barcelona and Seoul are her working bases. The competition years run from the Menuhin in 2002 and the Georg Kulenkampff in 2003 through the Tibor Varga in 2005, the Oistrakh in Moscow in 2006, the Tchaikovsky in 2007 and the Queen Elisabeth in 2009 to a silver medal at Indianapolis in 2010, a gold at the Wieniawski in 2011 and a first prize in Tokyo in 2024. She has appeared with the Royal Philharmonic, the Singapore Symphony, the radio orchestra in Hamburg, the Prague Philharmonic and the Bremen Chamber Orchestra under Krzysztof Penderecki, Maxim Vengerov, Ivor Bolton, Eiji Oue, Michal Nesterowicz, Sascha Goetzel and Yi-Chen Lin, in halls from the Wigmore and the Tonhalle to the Auditorio Nacional in Madrid.