Changyong Shin

Pianist Changyong Shin is a major prodigy who has racked up prize after prize since his preteen years. In 2018, he made his recording debut with the Steinway & Sons label. Shin was born in Anyong, South Korea, on April 15, 1994. He began studies with Mari Kwon in 2007 and then enrolled in 2009 at the Korea National Institute for the Gifted in the Arts. By that time, he was already a veteran prizewinner in piano competitions, having taken home first prize at the Kookmin Ilbo & Hansei University music competition in 2005, and followed that up with a series of other Korean honors. Shin won Third Prize and two special prizes (Romantic period and Master Class) at the 2010 Eastman Young Artists International Piano Competition in Rochester, New York. The following year he enrolled at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, studying with Robert McDonald. He moved on to the Juilliard School in New York in 2016, working toward master's and doctoral degrees. He has also taken master classes with Paul Badura-Skoda and others. His prizewinning ways did not desert him as he took first prize at the 2016 Hilton Head International Piano Competition and the 2018 Gina Bachauer International Artists Piano Competition, as well as several more Korean top prizes. Shin's performing career has already taken him to major venues, including appearances with the Hilton Head Symphony Orchestra and the Daejeon Philharmonic in 2017, and a solo concert in Korea's Kumho Art Hall the following year. In 2018, he released a recital featuring music by Bach, Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven on Steinway & Sons, including the difficult Piano Sonata No. 28 in A major, Op. 101, telling Listen magazine that "It’s late-period Beethoven, and there are a lot of lyrical moments. In his late period, there is a lot of monophonic beauty and lyrical polyphony. There is a lot of energy, but also an inner vibrancy. It is [hard] to express all of this." Shin's sophomore release on Steinway & Sons was another recital, this one including music of Beethoven (another late work, the Piano Sonata No. 30 in E major, Op. 109), Liszt, and Chopin.
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