Trio con Brio Copenhagen
SooJin Hong, violin; Soo-Kyung Hong, cello; Jens Elvekjaer, piano
Trio con Brio Copenhagen —the Korean sisters Soo-Jin Hong and Soo-Kyung Hong and the Danish pianist Jens Elvekjaer—was the recipient of the Kalichstein-Laredo- Robinson International Trio Award in 2005. This biennial award, one of the most coveted in the world of chamber music, honors in perpetuity the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio by encouraging and enhancing the career of an extraordinarily accomplished “rising” piano trio. The prize carries with it appearances on twenty major concert series across the USA including New York City’s Carnegie Hall.
Gramophone Magazine wrote of the trio’s début CD: “it’s easy to see what so impressed the judges . . . [the] performances can compete with the best available . . . airtight ensemble . . . a superb, greatly gifted chamber group.”
The trio was founded in Vienna in 1999 and first drew attention with a sensational performance that took the highest prize at Germany’s prestigious ARD-Munich Competition in 2002. Since then, they won first prize in several more competitions: Italy’s Premio Vittorio Gui (Florence, 2003), Norway’s Trondheim Chamber Music Competition (2003), and the Danish Radio Competition (Copenhagen, 2002). They also won the “Allianz-Preis” for Best Ensemble in Germany's Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (2003) and second prize in the Vienna Haydn Competition (2001) and the Premio Trio di Trieste (Italy, 2002). Critics have praised the trio for their “sparkling joie de vivre” and “magic dialogue;”—a review of their performance at the Salzburg Mozarteum said, “they cast a spell over their audience . . . so alive, so musical . . . ravishing.” Trio con Brio Copenhagen belongs unquestionably to the upper echelons of young chamber ensembles performing today.
Trio con Brio Copenhagen’s busy schedule includes major concert halls in Europe, USA and Asia, such as Tivoli Concert Hall (Copenhagen), the Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), Carnegie Hall (New York City), the Berlin Konzert¬haus; the Mozart-Saal (Vienna), Herkulessaal (Munich), Beethoven-Haus (Bonn), the Musikhalle (Hamburg), the Mozarteum (Salzburg), the Seoul and Sejong Arts Centers (Korea), Bunka Kaikan (Tokyo), Teatro Olimpico (Vicenza, Italy), the Båstad Chamber Music Festival (Sweden), and the Bergen and Trondheim Chamber Music Festivals (Norway).
In 2003 Trio con Brio Copenhagen performed all the Beethoven piano trios in a cycle of three concerts at the Tivoli Concert Hall in Copenhagen with great success. The trio was ”Ensemble in Residence” in Copenhagen’s Rundetaarn (Round Tower), with five sold-out concerts in 2005 broadcast on the European Broadcasting Union and Danish Radio. The trio has also broadcast on the BBC, Korean Broadcasting Systems, Norwegian Radio, Swedish Radio, Radiotelevisione Italiana, and on the major German networks (ARD, NDR, Hessischer Rundfunk and Radio Berlin).
Trio con Brio Copenhagen is frequently featured as the soloists in Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with orchestras such as the Copenhagen Philharmonic, the Danish National Symphony Orchestra/DR, the South Jutland Symphony Orchestra, the Aalborg Symphony Orchestra, the Odense Symphony Orchestra, l’Orchestre Syrinx (France), and the Prime Philharmonic Orchestra (Korea).
Biographical information provided by artist's management.
