Pianist Yeol Eum Son grew up, as she says, just a typical classical music-loving South Korean kid. However, by 2004 the 18-year-old was booked as a soloist playing Liszt with the New York Philharmonic and Lorin Maazel in Seoul, Daejeon and Tokyo. A silver medallist at both the Thirteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition and the 2011 International Tchaikovsky Competition, these days she’s renowned for the breath and diversity of her programs, as well as the all-round delicacy and imagination of her playing. Ahead of her four-city Australian debut, Clive Paget caught up with her on tour in Hanover to find out what makes her tick and how she curates her brilliantly inventive recitals.


Can I start by asking what was it that made you interested in becoming a classical pianist?

I was only three-and-a-half when I first started playing piano. At the time my country was very much into classical music. Half of my class, I would say 20 kids, were playing piano. It was just a regular school in South Korea, a public school, but it was the most natural thing to play at least one instrument, piano or violin or flute or cello. But then I got...