Sumi Hwang & Helmut Deutsch
Biography Sumi Hwang & Helmut Deutsch
Sumi Hwang
was born in Korea.
She was seen by a global audience of 300 million TV viewers when she gave a soaring rendition of the Olympic Anthem
at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics in February 2018. The New York Times praised the Korean soprano as 'arguably the star of the night'.
She has sung in the ensemble of the Theater Bonn for 4 years since 2014, following her victory that year in the prestigious Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels. The last season in Bonn she debuted the roles of Micaëla in Carmen, Lauretta in Gianni Schicchi, and Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro. She will also return to the role of Liù in Turandot in May and June 2018. And she jumped in Wiener Kammeroper as Fiordiligi of Cosi fan tutte (conducted by Stefan Vladar).
Plans for the upcoming 2018/19 season include her house debut at the Hessian State Theater in Wiesbaden, where she will perform Donna Anna in Don Giovanni and return to Bonn as Guest for Donna Anna again, as Mimi in La Boheme at Daegu Opera House and her debut with the Wiener Akademie singing the soprano solo in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony at the Vienna Musikverein
and Korea Tour.
In her previous seasons at the Theater Bonn, Sumi built up a large and diverse repertoire of roles, including Pamina
(Die Zauberflöte), Almirena (Rinaldo), Leïla (Les pêcheurs de perles), Fiordiligi (Così fan tutte), Marzelline (Fidelio),
Mimì (La bohème), and Cleopatra (Giulio Cesare in Egitto).
She has also sung a lead role in a contemporary opera: Lena in Vom Mädchen, das nicht schlafen wollte by Marius Felix Lange,
which was premiered in 2014.
The young artist is also becoming increasingly known to opera audiences across Europe and beyond.
She made her debut at the Grand Théâtre de Genève in January 2016 as Pamina, sang Norina in Donizetti’s I pazzi per progetti
at the Munich Prinzregententheater in 2012, and sang the Princess in Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges at the Korean National Opera.
As a recitalist, Sumi collaborates regularly with the renowned pianist Helmut Deutsch, with whom she has appeared in Bonn and Korea, and has also sung in Luxembourg and Washington D.C at the Phillips Collection with French pianist Jonas Vitaud.
In October 2015, she gave a Wigmore Hall Rosenblatt Recital debut alongside Helmut Deutsch. Her first debut album
with Helmut Deutsch will released next year.
Sumi appears regularly on the concert stage and particularly in Germany, where she has performed with the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie under Enrico Delamboye, the Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR under Dan Ettinger, the Philharmonie SWF
under Charles Olivieri-Munroe, the Neue Philharmonie München under Ulrich Weder, the Osnabrücker Symphonieorchester,
and with the Lautten Compagnie in Munich. She sang Dvořák’s Requiem at the Herkulessaal in Munich under Hayko Siemens,
the Brahms Requiem with the Münchner Symphoniker under Benedikt Haag, and Mozart concert arias, accompanied by Sakari Oramo
and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, in Bad Kissingen, where in 2014 she sang Gianetta in a concert performance of L’elisir d’amore.
In 2014, she also appeared with soprano Diana Damrau, conductor Patrick Lange and the Dresden Staatskapelle in a Christmas Concert for the President of Germany broadcast by the ZDF.
She has performed fer Mozart's Requiem Soloist with Netherlands Radio Radio Orchestra conducted by Markus Stenz at Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, "Die Dichterliebe- recomposed" by german composer Christian Jost in Tongyeong International Music Festival and under the baton Christophe Eschenbach she has performed "Puzzles and Games from Alice in Wonderland" by Chin.
In Korea, her appearances include performances with the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Myung Whun Chung, as well as recitals with Helmut Deutsch. In 2015, she also sang at the Seoul Spring Festival with the Busan Orchestra, and gave a concert at the Great Mountains Music Festival and School.
Following undergraduate and graduate degrees at Seoul National University, Sumi Hwang attended the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich, where she studied with Frieder Lang, Donald Sulzen and Céline Dutilly. She also participated in masterclasses with Helmut Deutsch, Siegfried Mauser, Andreas Schmidt, Dalton Baldwin and Lorraine Nubar.
Her numerous competition successes include the 1st Prize in the Anneliese Rothenberger Competition in Konstanz in 2013 and the 2014 Emmerich Smola Förderpreis, presented by the German TV network SWR. In 2014, she also awarded the Grand Prize for coming first in the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels.
