Kyung Wha Chung

For more than five decades, Kyung Wha Chung has been one of the most prominent musicians on the international scene. Born in 1948, she was regarded as a child prodigy in her native Korea, and arrived aged 13 in New York where she studied with Ivan Galamian at the Juilliard School. Becoming joint winner (with Pinchas Zukerman) of the Edgar Leventritt Competition in 1967 launched her international career. Throughout the 1970s, she appeared with leading international orchestras while continuing her studies with Joseph Szigeti. A contract with Decca/London resulted in widely admired benchmark recordings of the major Romantic concertos and sonatas with artists such as André Previn, Georg Solti and Radu Lupu. The middle child of seven siblings, she has performed with her elder sister, cellist Myung-Wha Chung, and her younger brother, conductor and pianist Myung-Whun Chung, as the Chung Trio. She stepped back from performance in 2008 due to illness, but returned in 2014 with a high-profile concert at London’s Festival Hall and recordings of solo Bach and French sonatas that revealed her customary rich, ripe violin tone to be undiminished.