Yeol Eum Son makes her Lisbon debut with the Gulbenkian Orchestra in two sold-out concerts on 8 and 9 October 2026, performing Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2 under the baton of Andrey Boreyko. The programme brings together three contrasting works: Shostakovich’s First Symphony, in which Son takes on its demanding piano part; the world premiere of Portuguese composer Carlos Caires’ Celebration, commissioned to mark the 70th anniversary of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation; and Prokofiev’s monumental Second Piano Concerto.
The Prokofiev has long occupied a central place in Son’s concerto repertoire. A work of extraordinary technical ferocity and emotional breadth, it has taken Son to major stages with orchestras including the BBC Symphony Orchestra at London’s Barbican Centre, the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, the Dresden Philharmonic, and the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa. Its formidable demands offer an especially vivid window into Son’s artistry: an approach in which virtuosity is inseparable from clarity, musical intelligence, and expressive depth. The BBC has noted that “few living pianists will play it better.” Gulbenkian similarly highlights the qualities that have distinguished Son throughout her career, describing her playing in terms of “astonishing poetic elegance and immense versatility” and naming her “one of the greatest revelations of the past decade.”
For Son, the Lisbon debut brings together several strands of an evolving artistic journey: a landmark concerto, a new Portuguese work, and a first encounter with one of the country’s most distinguished orchestras — all within a programme that places virtuosity in dialogue with the breadth and imagination of the 20th- and 21st-century repertoire.
Her return to the Portuguese stage comes after a series of appearances that have established an increasingly strong connection with audiences in the country. In recent seasons, Son has appeared at the Sintra Festival and at Porto’s Casa da Música, where she has given both a solo recital and performed as soloist with the Orquestra Sinfónica do Porto Casa da Música.
The Lisbon concerts form part of a busy closing chapter to Son’s 2026 season, which continues across Europe and the UK with a varied programme of orchestral and chamber engagements. In November, she joins the Irish Chamber Orchestra for performances of Mozart, directing from the piano, before returning to the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. In December, she returns to The Hague for another collaboration with the Residentie Orkest, with whom she served as Artist in Residence during the 2022/23 season.
Watch: Finale of Prokofiev Piano Concerto No.2 recorded at the PyeongChang Festival Orchestra, Korea under the baton of Maestro Dmitri Kitaenko
Photo: Marco Borggreve