Critics have called him “a true poet of the piano” whose “brilliant touch” allows him to explore the “spiritual depths” of the music he plays: William Youn is one of the finest pianists of our day and has established an international reputation, particularly for his Schubert recordings. His playing is characterized by subtlety, emotional insight, and sensitive analysis.
From Berlin to Seoul to New York, Youn has performed throughout the world with renowned orchestras such as the Cleveland Orchestra, the Munich Philharmonic, the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin, the Belgian National Orchestra and the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra in many of the world’s finest concert halls, including Wigmore Hall in London, the Konzerthaus in Vienna, the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, the Pierre Boulez Saal and the Konzerthaus in Berlin, the Tokyo Opera City Concert Hall, the Alte Oper in Frankfurt, deSingel in Antwerp, Walt Disney Hall in Los Angeles, and the Seoul Arts Center. He has worked with conductors Myung-Whun Chung, Hannu Lintu, Pietari Inkinen, Kristiina Poska, Thomas Hengelbrock and Mario Venzago, composers Isabel Mundry and Konstantia Gourzi, and forms a trio with Nils Mönkemeyer and Sabine Meyer.
William Youn is also a frequent guest at international festivals such as the Menuhin Festival in Gstaad, the Schubertiade in Hohenems/Schwarzenberg, the MITO SettembreMusica, the Grafenegg Festival, the Schleswig-Holstein Festival, the Rheingau Music Festival, the Heidelberg Spring Music Festival, the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival, the Mozartfest in Würzburg, the SWR Schwetzingen Festival, and the Davos Festival.
Numerous award-winning CD recordings document William Youn’s work. Following several recordings with Nils Mönkemeyer, a cycle of five albums for Oehms Classics with the complete Mozart piano sonatas, and the solo album “Schumann- Liszt- Schubert”, in November 2022 Sony Classical will release the third and final part of Youn’s complete recording of the Schubert piano sonatas. Critics have praised the first two parts of this trilogy for their “flawless, perfectly realized naturalness” (Fono Forum) and for Youn’s depiction of “Schubert’s sense of existential despair.” (Münchner Merkur).
In season 2023/24, William Youn will continue his successful Schubert cycles at the Schubertiade Hohenems/Schwarzenberg and in Taiwan, and will give guest performances in Montréal, New York, Taipei, Seoul and Munich, among other cities. In Berlin, he will juxtapose Schubert's A major Sonata with John Adams' minimalist masterpiece "Phrygian Gates" in the Pierre Boulez Hall, and he will again devote himself intensively to Bach's "Goldberg Variations": At the Montréal Bach Festival with a solo recital as well as in the revival of the production "Goldberg Variations" with the Vienna State Ballet. Together with the Munich Chamber Orchestra he will undertake an extended tour to his home country Korea in early summer 2024.
Born in Seoul, William Youn first discovered the piano in a Korean kindergarten. At the age of 13 he moved to the USA to study at the New England Conservatory in Boston. Five years later he moved to Germany, where he studied with the legendary piano pedagogue Karl-Heinz Kämmerling. While a scholarship student at the Piano Academy Lake Como, Youn received further musical inspiration from artists such as Dmitri Bashkirov, Andreas Staier, William Grant Naboré, and Menahem Pressler. William Youn teaches regularly at the Wilhelm Kempff Cultural Foundation in Positano, where he also teaches regularly.