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Mr. Yung Wook Yoo won the Grand Prize and Gold Medal of the 13th Paloma O'Shea Santander International Piano Competition which was granted by unanimous vote from the jury in August, 1998. This prize included important concert tours and recitals throughout the world as well as a recording contract with a major label. The concerts involved participation in world class festivals in Spain, Germany, France, Portugal, Japan and various countries in South America. Mr. Yoo recorded his first commercial CD under the Naxos Label, featuring piano transcriptions by Franz Liszt in November, 2000. He has also recorded the Elegiaque Piano Trios of Sergei Rachmaninov. Mr. Yoo has also been the winner of several national and international competitions; among them, the prestigious Kosciuszko Chopin Competition in the United States (1994) and the Montreal International Music Competition (1996).

Mr. Yoo has performed with the Orchestra National de Lille, Orchestra National de France, St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra, Orquesta Nacional de Espana, Orquesta Ciudad de Malaga, Orquesta Nacional de la Republica Dominica, Orquesta Sinfonica de Tenerife under the baton of notable conductors such as Pinchas Steinberg, Jesus Lopez Cobos, Rafael Fruhbeck de Burgos and Victor Pablo. The prestigious concert venues he has performed in include Wigmore Hall in London, the 92nd St. Y in New York, Tonhalle in Zurich, UNESCO Hall in Paris, Palau dela Musica in Barcelona, the Auditorio Nacional de Musica in Madrid, and the Al Bustan Festival.

Yung Wook Yoo was born on December 27, 1977 in Seoul, Korea where he began his musical studies. He gave his first recital when he was 10 years old in the Ye-eum Hall performing his own compositions. At this time his exceptional talent was revealed which resulted in winning several grants towards his education and eventually, his move to the United States. In 1996, he enrolled in the Juilliard School in the studio of Professor Martin Canin, and has been the recipient of scholarships from Juilliard and several contributions from private donors. Presently, Mr. Yoo is attending his final year of his Bachelor's of Music Degree at the Juilliard School under the tutelage of Professor Jerome Lowenthal.

Performance on September 22, 2001 at the
Terrace Theater, John F. Kennedy Center
for the Performing Arts, Washington, D.C.

Review by Ronald Broun, Washington Post
Monday, September 24, 2001; Page C05

Liszt's Sonata in B Minor seems to be in every young pianist's repertoire, and that is almost always a mistake. Few performers meet its enormous technical demands and fewer still have anything like the heroic temperament to make all the scales and arpeggios mean something. Unless the piece is attacked and conquered it sounds cheap and vulgar, the claptrap of a composer-virtuoso who left a ton of notes surrounding a vacuous emotional center.

Yung Wook Yoo played this monster in his recital Saturday night at the Kennedy Center's Terrace Theater about as well as it can be played. Yoo has a big technique that lets his imagination roam free, but what distinguished this performance from so many others is his fierce, almost reckless musicality. He roared through the sonata, confronted it, faced it down, exploited its thunder, and along the way was not afraid to drop a few notes here and there, an inevitable, inconsequential byproduct of Liszt interpretation at the cutting edge.

Yoo seized Frederic Rzewski's "Cotton Mill Blues" by the throat, reveling in its depiction of machinery throbbing satanically out of control. Beethoven's late Sonata No. 30 in E, Op. 109, is not quite yet Yoo's piece -- there is more there than he found -- but he did find a singing, aristocratic line in a Liszt transcription of a Beethoven song ("Adelaide"). Bach's sprawling Toccata in E Minor opened the program.

Yung Wook's Recording of Franz Liszt

Yung Wook records with Naxos