Yeree Suh

Her voice has a rich palette of expression between velvety-soft mezzo and shimmering metallic highs, coupled with a fine sense of smooth dynamics. VOLKSBLATT

Yeree Suh delights audiences and critics with her radiant yet finely nuanced soprano, making her an internationally sought-after interpreter of 17th and 18th century repertoire as well as contemporary music. Since her debut as Ninfa in Monteverdi's opera L'Orfeo under René Jacobs at the Innsbruck Festival in 2003, followed by engagements at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden Berlin and the Theater an der Wien, the Korean singer has worked regularly with specialists in historical performance practice such as Philippe Herreweghe, Ton Koopman, Andrea Marcon, Jean-Christophe Spinosi, Midori Seiler, Rubén Dubrovsky, Enrico Onofri and Masaaki Suzuki, as well as with ensembles such as Anima Eterna, the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, the Venice Baroque Orchestra and the Finnish Baroque Orchestra. She toured with Concerto Köln and Harald Schmidt as Mademoiselle Silberklang in Mozart's Schauspieldirektor, and as Semele she made her debut at the Beijing Festival in 2010, a role with which she could last be seen at the Halle Handel Festival in 2022. 

With her exceptional vocal control and clear timbre, the soprano is also one of the outstanding interpreters of 20th and 21st century music. Together with Kent Nagano and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Yeree Suh gave the European premiere of Matthias Pintscher's with lilies white, and with the hr-Sinfonieorchester under Paavo Järvi she sang George Benjamin's A Mind of Winter, Unsuk Chin's Acrostic-Wordplay with the Nieuw Ensemble Amsterdam, Wolfgang Rihm's Mnemosyne with the Scharoun Ensemble of the Berlin Philharmonic, and Ligeti's Mysteries of the Macabre with the Ensemble intercontemporain under Susanna Mälkki. She also participated in the world premiere of Rihm's Three Women at the Theater Basel (director: Georges Delnon). Other highlights of her repertoire include works by Pierre Boulez, such as Le soleil des eaux with Pablo Heras-Casado and Peter Eötvös, Pli selon pli with Jonathan Nott and Thierry Fischer, and Le Visage Nuptial with Cornelius Meister. 

At the 40th anniversary concert of the Ensemble intercontemporain in 2016, the singer celebrated an outstanding success with songs by Anton Webern. In 2017 she returned to the Musikfest Berlin with Toshio Hosokawa's Lament under Shiyeon Sung. Another highlight since then was Mahler's 4th Symphony with the Concertgebouw Orchestra under Daniele Gatti in Seoul. In 2019 she appeared with the SWR Symphony Orchestra under Peter Rundel at the Salzburg Festival with Luigi Nono's Il canto sospeso and with the Bochumer Symphoniker and Steven Sloane at the Ruhrtriennale in a new production by Kornél Mundruczó based on Ligeti's Requiem. Most recently, the soprano interpreted Brahms' A German Requiem at the Ravinia Festival with Matthias Goerne, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Marin Alsop.

She has a close working relationship with Jos van Immerseel, both as a conductor and as a song accompanist; their joint Schubertiade evening has also been released on CD, as has Carmina Burana. The starting point of Yeree Suh's discography was the highly acclaimed 2008 CD Musik der Hamburger Pfeffersäcke with the Elbipolis Barockorchester Hamburg. Since then, she has recorded works by Purcell, Handel, Bach, Haydn, Sacchini and Respighi, among others, as well as contemporary works by Judith Bingham and Michael Jarrell. 

In the 2023/24 she will return to the Brucknerhaus Linz and to the Ensemble Contrechamps in Geneva. She will also give her debut in the main hall of the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, sing Handel’s Samson with the Gaechinger Cantorey under Hans-Christian Rademann as well as Mozart’s Requiem at the Musikverein Wien. A highlight will be Penderecki’s The Black Mask with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra and Marin Alsop. Further concerts will be at the Tongyeong International Musik Festival with the Klangforum Wien as well as Nono’s Como une ola de fuerza y luz with the Orchestra de Radio France in Paris.

Yeree Suh studied at Seoul National University, Berlin University of the Arts with Harald Stamm, in Leipzig with Regina Werner-Dietrich and at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis with Gerd Türk. She has been a professor of voice at the Akademie für Tonkunst - University of Cooperative Education in Darmstadt since 2019. She has been appointed professor at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Stuttgart as of the summer semester 2023.

Season 2023/24

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