South Korean concert pianist Chi Ho Han is associate professor of music in piano at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.
He is an artist with an unmistakable personal mark, embracing technical diversity, emotional realness, and philosophical depth in all his unique recital programs. Establishing a firm conviction in German arts at age 20, He received top prizes at Beethoven competitions in Vienna and Bonn, and a Schubert competition in Dortmund.
Earlier achievements also include first prize and the Audience Award at the International Kissinger KlavierOlympic Competition (Germany, 2013), first prize at the Seoul International Music Competition (Korea, 2014), top prize at the ARD International Music Competition, with additional Audience Award and Best Performance on Commissioned Work (Germany, 2014), silver medal at the Gina Bachauer International Artists Piano Competition (U.S., 2014), and fourth prize at the Queen Elisabeth International Competition (Belgium, 2016). He was awarded third prize and the Isang Yun Prize at the Orléans International Piano Competition on contemporary art music (France, 2022).
Han was artist-in-residence at the Korean Cultural Centre in Budapest from 2022 to 2023 and performed to critical acclaim at the Seoul Arts Center Symphony Festival, Festival Internazionale di Musica da Camera di Cervo, International Klavier-Festival Ruhr, Kissinger Sommer International Music Festival, International Rheingau Music Festival, International Bodensee Music Festival, Lake Como Piano Festival, Musikdorf Ernen, and Deer Valley Music Festival.
Han has performed worldwide, including the complete Beethoven concertos, Romantic and Russian standards to contemporary commissions, collaborations with the Austrian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, National Orchestra of Belgium, Lviv National Philharmonic, Munich Chamber Orchestra, Philharmonic Orchestra of Marseille, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, and St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra.
He is a protégé of pianist-composer György Kurtág and a former student of Arnulf von Arnim and Arie Vardi. “He plays the way great composers themselves would have played,” said Kurtág of Han in Budapest in 2023.
