Portland Chamber Orchestra - Best Buddies

BENJAMIN KIM - PIANO SOLOIST

22-year-old pianist Ben Kim has won critical acclaim and numerous awards. His budding career has taken him throughout the United States to such venues as Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center; and to Austria, England, Germany, Italy, Poland, Russia and the Far East. Mr. Kim's recital and chamber music performances include the festivals of Aspen, Ravinia, Bowdoin, Piano Festival Northwest, Salzburg, and Leipzig.

Schumann began work on the Piano Concerto in 1841.The whole work is exquisite, full of inventiveness, extraordinary lyricism, tenderness, and energy. The themes of the second and third movements are hewn from the opening theme of the first. Unlike a Lisztian piece, Schumann balances the piano and orchestra, giving them shared responsibility for conveying the themes-a style that would strongly affect later concerto composers. Pianistically, the concerto is much more a vehicle for lyricism than virtuosity. Liszt derided the work as "a concerto without piano." Sardonic remarks aside, the esteemed musicologist Donald Tovey summed up what everyone else hears: "…eminently beautiful from beginning to end, so free, spacious, and balanced in form, and so rich and varied in ideas."

Ben began studying piano at age five. He gave his first solo recital at age eight and made his orchestral debut at twelve. He has since performed as guest soloist with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the Oregon Symphony, the Columbia Symphony Orchestra, the Oregon Sinfonietta, and the Far Eastern Symphony in Khabarovsk, Russia, among others. Highlights of Ben's 2005-06 season include an Asian concert tour through Japan and Korea, performances of Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Peabody Symphony Orchestra, Schumann Piano Concerto with the Portland Chamber Orchestra, and Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra.

In addition, Ben has garnered top prizes in numerous competitions, including the Grand Prize in the 2000 World Piano Competition for Young Artists and most recently, First Place in the 2004 Yale Gordon Piano Competition at the Peabody Conservatory. Ben has also won the highest prizes in the Kosciuszko Foundation Chopin Piano Competition in New York and the MTNA National Baldwin Piano Competition. Ben's performances have also been broadcast nationally on NPR.

In 2004, Ben finished an accelerated Bachelor of Music degree program at the Peabody Conservatory as a student of Leon Fleisher. He has been continuing his studies at Peabody as a candidate for the prestigious Artist Diploma program. Beginning this fall, Ben has also been selected to attend the International Piano Academy Lake Como in Italy, a program for seven pianists, headed by pianist Martha Argerich. Significant teachers include Dorothy Fahlman and Yong Hi Moon.