Suye Park Wins Jean Sibelius Competition, Marking Second Consecutive Korean Victory

Another Achievement Following Inmo Yang's 2022 Victory

A Korean violinist has won the Jean Sibelius Competition, which is held every five years, for the second consecutive time.

Violinist Suye Park, 25, won first prize at the 13th Jean Sibelius International Violin Competition, which concluded in Helsinki, Finland, on May 29 (local time), according to the Kumho Cultural Foundation on May 30. Suye Park's victory follows Inmo Yang's win at the 12th competition, which was held in 2022 due to COVID-19, marking two consecutive wins for Korean violinists.

Suye Park receives a first prize of 30,000 euros (approximately 46.72 million KRW) and, as part of her award, will be loaned a 1777 Giovanni Battista Guadagnini violin for at least one year. She will also have opportunities to perform with orchestras such as the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Helsinki Philharmonic, and will receive mentoring from jury chairman John Storgards and violinist Pekka Kuusisto.

Through her agency, Mok Production, Suye Park shared her thoughts on winning: "I am so happy to have won the Sibelius Competition. It means so much to me, and I am glad I was able to share my music until the very end. It still doesn't feel real, but I am deeply grateful to everyone who supported me from start to finish."

Violinist Suye Park is bowing toward the audience after her performance at the Jean Sibelius Competition.
Photo by Matias Ahonen, courtesy of Kumho Cultural Foundation.

Forty violinists participated in the finals of the 13th Jean Sibelius International Violin Competition. From May 19 to 25, six finalists, including Suye Park, were selected through the first and second rounds. In the finals, which took place from May 27 to 29, the finalists performed Sibelius's Violin Concerto and a contemporary violin concerto. Suye Park performed Oliver Knussen's Violin Concerto with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Dima Slobodeniouk, and Sibelius's Violin Concerto with the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Pietari Inkinen, earning her first place. Second place went to Minami Yoshida (Japan), and third place to Claire Wells (United States).

This year's jury included seven members, among them Korean violinists Lee Sungju and Jinju Cho, who served as Kumho Art Hall's artist-in-residence in 2015.

The Jean Sibelius International Violin Competition was established in 1965 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Finland's leading composer, Jean Sibelius, and has been held every five years since. At the inaugural competition in 1965, Russian violinist Oleg Kagan won first prize. The competition has since produced world-class violinists such as Viktoria Mullova (first prize, 1980), Leonidas Kavakos (joint first prize, 1985), and Sergey Khachatryan (first prize, 2000). Other Korean laureates include Kumho Young Artist alumna Shin Jia (joint third prize, 2005), Esther Yoo (third prize, 2010, United States), and Kumho Young Artist alumna Christel Lee (first prize, 2015, United States), in addition to Inmo Yang.

In her early twenties, Suye Park already has five international albums to her name and is attracting attention on the global stage. She moved to Germany at the age of nine and, at sixteen, recorded the complete Paganini Caprices, releasing her debut album with the Swedish BIS label. Her third album, "Journey of the Century," was selected as Gramophone magazine's "Album of the Month" and "2021 Album of the Year." She is scheduled to release a concerto album and a violin solo album this year.

Suye Park was also named one of Forbes Korea's "20 Power Leaders in Their 20s and 30s" in 2022. She is currently pursuing the highest performance degree at the Hanns Eisler School of Music Berlin under the tutelage of Ulf Wallin. With support from the Samsung Foundation of Culture, she is playing a 1753 Giovanni Battista Guadagnini violin from Milan. This year, she was invited as a Kumho Rising Star by the Kumho Cultural Foundation and held a recital at Kumho Art Hall Yonsei in February.