Perry So conducts the Sinfonieorchester Wuppertal next Sunday and Monday, 10 and 11 May, in the Historische Stadthalle Wuppertal with a programme including Arvo Pärt’s Fratres, Stravinsky’s Symphony in three movements and Schumann’s Symphony No. 2 in C major, Op. 61. This is Perry’s second visit to Germany so far this year following his appearance before the Rheinische Philharmonie in Koblenz this past January when he conducted a very French programme with works by Saint-Saëns, Poulenc and Mozart’s Paris Symphony.
Perry So was born in 1982 in Hong Kong, where he received his early training in piano, organ, violin, viola and composition. He received a BA in literature from Yale University with a major in Central European music and literature of the modernist period, during which time he founded an academic orchestra and conducted the university’s opera company. He studied conducting initially with James Sinclair and later with Gustav Meier at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore. In 2008 Perry was awarded First Prize and Special Prize at the 5th St. Petersburg Prokofiev International Conducting Competition. Following this recognition he was appointed Assistant Conductor and then Associate Conductor of the Hong Kong Philharmonic, Gustavo Dudamel Conducting Fellow at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Artistic Collaborator of the Principality of Asturias Symphony Orchestra, and a member of the Department of Conducting at the Manhattan School of Music.
In recent seasons, Perry So has made his debut with the San Francisco Symphony, as well as his European operatic debut with the Royal Danish Opera and The Magic Flute. Highlights include a tour to Italy with the Nuremberg Symphony and a seven-week tour of South Africa conducting three different orchestras in Verdi’s Requiem. Other debuts in recent years include appearances with the Cleveland and Minnesota Orchestras, the symphony orchestras of Navarra, Malaga, Tenerife, Nuremberg, Israel, New Zealand, Houston, Detroit, New Jersey and Shanghai, the London, Szezcin, Seoul and China Philharmonics, the Residentie Orkest in The Hague and the Staatsorchester Rheinische Philharmonie in Koblenz. In 2013 he toured the Balkan Peninsula conducting the Zagreb Philharmonic in the first series of cultural exchanges established after the break-up of Yugoslavia.
Perry So’s work in the recording studio encompasses a wide range of 20th century British, French and Russian music with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and the BBC Concert Orchestra, and his album of Barber and Korngold Violin Concertos with Alexander Gilman and the Cape Town Philharmonic received the Diapason d’Or in 2012. His wide-ranging musical interests include numerous world premieres on four continents, as well as the reintroduction of Renaissance and Baroque repertoire into symphonic programmes, notably championing the works of Jean-Philippe Rameau. His work with young musicians has taken him to the Australian Youth Orchestra, the National Youth Orchestra of Canada, the Round Top Festival, the Manhattan School of Music, the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts and the Yale School of Music.