Page 44 - Guildhall Coverage Book 2020-21

Colin’s Column

26 September 2020
Soohong Park wins Guildhall School’s

Gold Medal 2020.

Guildhall School of Music & Drama is delighted to announce Soohong Park as the winner of this
year’s Gold Medal, the School’s most prestigious prize for outstanding musicians.
The prize is awarded to singers and instrumentalists in alternate years, and 2020 was the turn of
the instrumentalists. The final, rescheduled from May, took place on Friday 25 September and
was broadcast on Guildhall School’s website the following evening. It is now available to view for
free for a week.

Park’s winning performance was Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C
minor accompanied by the Guildhall Symphony Orchestra conducted by Richard Farnes. The
other Gold Medal finalists, Ben Tarlton and Ke Ma also performed concertos of their choice.

Soohong Park says: ‘I am honoured to receive the Gold Medal! It was such a special evening
because I felt we were connected through the music even though we were sitting far away
from each other. We all had to listen more carefully and trust each other when it came to the
performance, and it worked! Thanks to Head of Recording & Audio Visual (AV) Julian
Hepple and the AV department, rehearsals went flawlessly. I want to thank all the staff who
were involved and especially I’d like to mention Concert Piano Technician JP Williams for
keeping the piano in an excellent condition for rehearsals and the performance. And, of
course, my teacher Ronan O’Hora for his endless support.’

To allow for social distancing, the musicians’ performances took place across four different
spaces across two buildings at the School and synced using ground-breaking low latency