Maestra Shiyeon Sung: conducting as a transfer of energy

Conductor Shiyeon Sung with the Auckland Philharmonia

Photo credit: Adrian Malloch

In 2023, Shiyeon Sung was appointed Principal Guest Conductor of the Auckland Philharmonia. In a recent interview she talked about how she became a conductor and her upcoming concert with the Philharmonia.

Shiyeon Sung was a piano student in Berlin when she saw a video of the great German conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, conducting the Berlin Philharmonic during an international tour in the 1930’s. She was astounded.

“He was conducting Brahms’ 4th Symphony, and in the last movement, Allegro Energico e Passionato, it was amazing,” Sung remembers. “Just one person, the conductor, drew out all the musicians’ fire and passion. I was stunned to see this world of the conductor, to see what magic could happen between 80 musicians.”

Sung wanted to find out more about the conductor’s role. “I wanted to know how this experience can happen - and that’s why I decided to become a conductor.”

Born in Pusan, South Korea, Sung, who had begun playing as a pre-schooler, was a talented child pianist. She went to an arts high school in Seoul, performing as a piano soloist, playing chamber music and winning competitions, but knew she needed to further her studies in Europe. Aged 18, Sung travelled to Zürich in Switzerland, and two years later to Berlin, where she studied piano at the Hanns Eisler School of Music.  

Shiyeon Sung, aged 7, competing in a piano competition in her home city, Busan.

Photo courtesy of Shiyeon Sung

Berlin was a stimulating environment for young musicians. Students were encouraged to attend rehearsals by the Berlin Philharmonic and Sung was impressed by conductors like Claudio Abbado and the many international soloists working with the orchestra. “Students could get a concert ticket for 10 euros,” she tells me. “You could go every night for that price. It was marvellous!”

Inspired by the conductors she saw on stage, she asked to study conducting at the Hanns Eisler School as a “second major” but discovered this was not an option. “So, I would have to start all over again”, she recalls. “When I consulted my piano professor and my musical friends, most said it wasn’t a good idea and that I should focus on the piano.”

Professor of Conducting Rolf Reuter offered a different perspective. “He advised me that the path to becoming a conductor is very hard, very tough,” Sung tell me. “But then he said ‘if you think about your life as 70 years, one or two years is not a long time in whole-of-life terms. Just try it - and decide afterwards.’”

Sung took his advice. “I was not very young, and I was female, and there were few women in the conducting class – but it was an adventure for me,” she says.  She studied conducting with Reuter in Berlin for over five years, completing doctoral level studies in 2006. She then spent three months in Stockholm, working on advanced conducting studies with legendary Finnish conductor and teacher Jorma Panula, then in his late 70’s.

Sung’s career took a leap forward when she became the first woman to win first prize in the biennial Sir Georg Solti International Conductors’ Competition in Frankfurt in 2006. This success, and top prize in Bamberg’s Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition the next year, confirmed her reputation as a rising star on the podium.   

Conductor Shiyeon Sung in 2008

…a rising star on the podium.

Photo courtesy of Shiyeon Sung

Doors began to open. Her studies with Panula were cut short when she was appointed Assistant Conductor to James Levine at the Boston Symphony in 2007, the first female conductor to hold the position. While in that role, she began a close association with the Seoul Philharmonic, becoming their associate conductor in 2009, and subsequently chief conductor of another South Korean orchestra, the Gyeonggi Philharmonic. Her biography now lists her work with numerous international orchestras, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington, DC.

Sung speaks modestly about her triumphs, but she has clearly been succeeding for nearly two decades in a career where men still greatly outnumber women. Has being a woman on the podium been an issue for her? “I talked to my manager about this recently,” she says, “and she mentioned some difficulties in managing my engagements in the beginning of my career,  some resistance to hiring women conductors. But there has been progress, and time has changed peoples’ minds. The newer generation of female conductors would be surprised to hear of the difficulties of the past.”

Sung had no female teachers or mentors earlier in her career. She remembers vividly, however, the impact of Australian conductor Simone Young, assistant conductor to Daniel Barenboim at the Berlin State Opera while Sung was studying at the Hanns Eisler School. “I went to quite a few performances conducted by her, and watching her gave me a lot of inspiration,” Sung remembers. “It was brilliant, the way she did her job, and it gave me a lot of ideas about the role of a female conductor on the podium. Even the way she dressed, very casual and free, was new and fresh for me.”

How does Sung see the conductor’s role today? “Part of the job happens on the podium,” she says. “But before that, a lot happens in rehearsal, and the other part is preparing the music in the mind before you arrive in front of the orchestra.”

Communication plays a huge part. “You have to talk to a lot of people, deciding the programme with the programme director, and of course talking with the musicians. It starts from there, and then you must make it happen in performance, bringing everyone’s minds and thoughts and energies towards one result.”

Conductor Shiyeon Sung

“…bringing everyone’s minds and thoughts and energies towards one result.”

Photo credit: Astrid Ackermann

“Conducting is not just waving your hands about on the podium. It’s a kind of transfer of energy between me and the musicians and the audience.”

Her favourite repertoire is from the late Romantic period, Mahler and Richard Strauss, and 20th century composers like Bartók, Shostakovich and Lutoslawski. “When I conduct those big orchestrations, amazing energy and passion and inspiration are flowing through the hall.”

Her first engagements with the Auckland Philharmonia were in 2020, a period disrupted by pandemic cancellations and strict rules of entry to New Zealand. “It was a very weird time to travel,” she remembers. “Almost every planned performance was cancelled.”

She thinks the stresses of the time brought her and the orchestra closer together. “When I raised my baton for the first time with them, it was kind of emotional, surrounded by the anxiety of COVID. It was a smaller orchestra, for a Brahms Serenade and a Haydn symphony, and we did two different programmes in three days. But it was a release of all those stresses to focus on the music, and the Auckland Philharmonia was sounding so great, I just fell in love with the orchestra!”

She’s been working with the Auckland Philharmonia for five years now. The orchestra’s Director of Artistic Planning, Gale Mahood, describes her as a “total character”. Commenting that Sung brings a lot of laughter with her, Mahood says “she's a delight to have around. She has an impish sense of humour and never shies away from a programming challenge.”

The upcoming May concert begins with a New Zealand work Sung hasn’t met before, Kenneth Young’s Douce Tristesse. The “sweet sadness’ of the title refers, the composer tells me, to his melancholic feelings looking out at the “glorious, elevated vista over the sea towards the Kaimai Ranges”, on a final family visit to a favourite holiday cottage.

For Sung, who has travelled in Aotearoa’s South Island, Young’s music is “like New Zealand’s nature and landscape; it’s peaceful, wonderful, the wind is there in the music. I think,” she says, “the audience will love it.”

Sung has worked before with virtuoso pianist Alexander Gavrylyuk, playing Prokofiev’s  Piano Concerto No 3 for this Auckland concert. She has great memories of his performance of Prokofiev’s 2nd Piano Concerto with the Seoul Philharmonic under her baton 18 years ago. Both pianist and conductor were then building reputations as starry international talents, and Korean critics were enthusiastic about both, praising Sung’s “charismatic command”.

Mahood comments that as well as more adventurous musical choices, Sung excels in standard repertoire. “Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No 5 has been on her wish list for a while, so it'll be really exciting for us to perform this well-loved work with her.”

Sung herself is also looking forward to conducting the work. It’s deeply expressive music, though without a stated programmatic basis. Tchaikovsky wrote some notes when he was sketching it, referring to Romantic concepts like “a complete resignation before fate” and “the predestination of Providence”.

“Some people think,” says Sung, “that the most touching and emotional music is found in Tchaikovsky’s 6th Symphony, but for me it’s in the 5th. It’s a great work for me personally – all his passion is in there. The music is so romantic; it’s hard to express in words.”

18 years ago Korean critics described Sung as a “rising ‘maestra’ to look out for”, and WQXR New York City’s classical music station listed her in their 2013 list of “top five women conductors on the rise”, alongside New Zealand’s own Gemma New and Sung’s Korean compatriot Han-Na Chang.

Shiyeon Sung

“…well-established in her career as an international conductor.”

Photo credit: Yongbin Park

Maestra Sung is now, in mid-career, a well-established international conductor, travelling widely from her home base in Berlin. Highlights for this year include concerts in the US with the Jacksonville Symphony and her debut in August with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, as well as more performances with the Auckland Philharmonia. “People in Europe,” she suggests “don’t know enough about the high quality standards of the music-making in Australia and New Zealand.”  

She’s also very happy about her upcoming performance with one of Berlin’s seven big orchestras, the Konzerthaus Orchestra Berlin, later this year. “When you perform in different cities around the world, you meet lots of new people. But it’s different when you perform in your home city; you can invite your people, your friends and family. It’s a joyful feeling.”

Auckland Philharmonia ‘Tchaikovsky 5’ Shiyeon Sung (conductor), Alexander Gavrylyuk (pianist) Auckland, May 15, 2025 (more information and booking here)

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto and Brahms’ 2nd Symphony Shiyeon Sung (conductor) Simone Lamsma (violinist) Melbourne, August 7 & 9, 2025 (more information and booking here)