Caroline Hong - Piano
Ohio State University
Hailed for her “expressive and powerful playing,” “formidable technique,” as well as her “keen sense of lyricism and the classical style,” Korean-American pianist Caroline Hong continues to flourish in her career as an internationally active soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, master class teacher, lecturer, adjudicator and recording artist. Pulitzer Prize and Academy award-winning composer John Corigliano referred to her as “one of the greatest pianists I have ever heard” after a performance of his Etude Fantasy (1976). Critics wrote that it was “breathtaking” and “hard to imagine a better performance”. She has been favorably reviewed by the American Record Guide and has recorded all three Carl Vine piano sonatas further establishing herself as an interpreter of 20th and 21st century piano solo music. As a chamber musician, she has performed with many fine artist groups including the Vermeer String Quartet and the Dorian Wind Quintet, and toured extensively in the U.S. as a member of the piano-violin duo, Duo Viardot, with violinist Charles Wetherbee.
Caroline Hong received her training from the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University (BM, scholarship student, graduating with performance honors), The Juilliard School (MM), and Indiana University (DM) where she also served as an associate instructor for theory and secondary piano. She has served on faculty for the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, Vianden International Festival and School (Luxembourg), Longwood University, and was the first female faculty member at the Piano at Peabody Roads Scholar summer program (2005). Currently, she is serving as Professor of Piano at The Ohio State University, and is the Executive/Artistic Director of the Franz Liszt (U.S.) International Festival and Competition. She has a strong teaching record reflected by successful students who have won international competitions and positions in music academia. Her past teachers include Martin Canin, Jerome
Lowenthal, Sergei Babayan, Dmitrii Paperno, Ann Schein, Karen Shaw, James Tocco, M. Deitzer, and Fernando Laires; and Claude Frank, John Browning, Leon Fleisher, Gyorgy Sebok, and Menahem Pressler as master class teachers. Her first teacher, with whom she began study of piano at age two and a half, was her mother, Mrs. Koon Ja Hong.
During her competing years, Caroline Hong made her debut at Carnegie Weill Recital Hall as a winner of the Frinna Awerbuch International Piano Competition. She was also a laureate of the Van Cliburn International Audition, the Robert Casadesus International Competition, William Kapell International Piano Competition, UNISA International Piano Competition, Beethoven Foundation, Distinguished Performer of the Palm Beach International Piano Competition, Winner of the Society of American Musicians, Bach Festival of Southern California, among others. As winner of the Chicago Civic Orchestra Soloist Competition, she performed in Symphony Center under the baton of Michael Morgan, Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Major, Op. 26. She has been featured on radio broadcasts worldwide, as a performer for the Sergei Babayan International Piano Academy, Robert Sherman’s “Young Artists Showcase” (New York Times Radio), and South Afrikaans radio, among others. She is a Steinway Artist, principal founder of the American Liszt Society Ohio Chapter, associate musician of the Columbus Symphony where she serves as the de facto principal keyboardist, and the newest member of the Board of Directors of the American Liszt Society.