Kun-Woo Paik
made his debut at age ten performing Grieg’s Piano Concerto with the Korean National Orchestra. At 15 he moved to New York to study with Rosina Lhévinne at The Juilliard School, and he also studied in London, with Ilona Kabos, and in Italy, with Guido Agosti and Wilhelm Kempff. His international career took off following his first New York appearance, performing Ravel’s complete piano works at Lincoln Center, as well as his orchestral debut at Carnegie Hall. He has since collaborated with conductors including Zubin Mehta, Lorin Maazel, Mariss Jansons, Long Yu, Neville Marriner, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Jiří Bĕlohlávek, Vladimir Jurowski, Dmitri Kitayenko, Paavo Järvi, Iván Fischer, and Krzysztof Penderecki (performing his new piano concerto under his direction). He has performed with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra (1987’s Last Night of the Proms), Orchestre de Paris, Orchestre National de France, Berliner Symphoniker, Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra, Oslo Philharmonic, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI, Warsaw Philharmonic, and English Chamber Orchestra.

Kun Woo Paik’s recordings include works by Scriabin, Liszt, and Musorgsky, as well as the Rachmaninoff piano concerto cycle for BMG. His recording of the complete Prokofiev piano concertos received France’s Diapason d’Or 1993 and Nouvelle Académie du Disque awards. As an exclusive Decca artist, he recorded Busoni’s transcriptions of works by J.S. Bach, Fauré’s piano works (which won all the major prizes in France), and Chopin’s complete works for piano and orchestra (with Antoni Wit and the Warsaw Philharmonic); in 2005 he began a project to record all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas.

Mr. Paik’s recent engagements include a Carnegie Hall recital, a performance at Milan’s Teatro alla Scala with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic and Yuri Temirkanov, the complete Rachmaninoff concerto cycle in St. Petersburg, and returns to the New Japan Philharmonic, China Philharmonic, Shanghai Philharmonic, and Bergen Philharmonic. He has also given recitals in France, Italy, and Spain.

Kun Woo Paik, who lives in Paris, was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government in 2002.