BIEK brings the Royal Northern College of Music to Seoul for a landmark Global Arts Week 2026

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Seven days of competition, masterclasses, a sold-out faculty concert and Korea's first in-country RNCM entrance auditions mark the beginning of a lasting partnership between BIEK and one of the world's top five conservatoires

Seoul, August 2026. From 27 July to 1 August, the Rode Arts Center in Seoul became, for one remarkable week, an outpost of the Royal Northern College of Music. BIEK Global Arts Week 2026, hosted by British International Education Korea (BIEK) in partnership with the RNCM and operated by About Classic Group, brought two of the College's most distinguished professors to Korea for an international piano competition, two days of masterclasses, a faculty concert that sold every seat in the house, a winners' gala and, for the first time on Korean soil, official RNCM entrance auditions carrying conditional offers of admission for September 2027.

The project was conceived, planned and delivered in full by BIEK's team and partners. The result was a week that participants, parents, guests and the visiting professors alike described as exceptional and one that has already laid the foundation for an annual, or bi-annual, event of growing scale.

A world-leading conservatoire, in Seoul

The Royal Northern College of Music one of the most respected conservatoires in the world. It is ranked fifth globally for music in the QS World University Rankings and sits within the world's top ten institutions for the performing arts, placing it alongside the Juilliard School, the Royal College of Music and the Curtis Institute among the very small group of institutions that define the international standard for musical training. Its alumni fill the ranks of leading orchestras, opera houses and concert stages across the globe.

For Korean students, an institution of that stature has always meant a long and expensive journey. Auditioning for a British conservatoire typically involves travelling to the United Kingdom, often more than once, with all the cost and uncertainty that entails. BIEK's founding purpose is to close that distance, and Global Arts Week 2026 was the clearest demonstration yet of what that purpose looks like in practice. The RNCM's own senior faculty were in Seoul, judging, teaching, performing and auditioning and Korean students could meet the world's best without leaving home.

The professors

Professor Graham Scott and Professor Simon Callaghan of the RNCM

The RNCM sent two of its most senior pianists to lead the week.

Professor Graham Scott has been Head of the School of Keyboard Studies at the RNCM since 2007 and is Artistic Director of the RNCM James Mottram International Piano Competition. Hailed by Gramophone as "an exceptional talent," he studied with Ryszard Bakst at Chetham's School of Music and the RNCM, and became the first artist to win both the Young Concert Artists auditions in New York and the Young Concert Artists Trust auditions in London. He has appeared as soloist with the London Philharmonic, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Singapore Symphony and the St Louis Symphony among many others, once standing in for Martha Argerich with the Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz. He is a veteran juror of major international competitions including the Horowitz Competition, the Gilels Competition and the Jaén International Piano Competition, and his students have gone on to win top prizes around the world. He chaired the jury in Seoul.

Professor Simon Callaghan is Professor of Piano at the RNCM, a Steinway Artist since 2012 and one of the most prolific British recording pianists of his generation. His discography for Hyperion, Nimbus, Lyrita and Somm includes four albums in Hyperion's celebrated Romantic Piano Concerto series and first recordings of the complete piano music of Rebecca Clarke, George Dyson and William Busch. He performs regularly at Wigmore Hall and the Royal Festival Hall, tours across Asia, Europe and North America, and is a favourite at Germany's Husum Festival of Piano Rarities. He is also Artistic Director of the Conway Hall Sunday Concerts in London, the longest-running chamber music series in Europe, only the sixth person to hold that post since the series began in 1887. His recital partners have included Sheku Kanneh-Mason, Adrian Brendel and Raphael Wallfisch.

They were joined on the jury and on the concert platform by two outstanding Korean pianists who are themselves RNCM alumnae, Jaekyung Yoo and Yunji Kim, both of whom now teach and perform in Korea and who brought a living connection between the College in Manchester and the musical community in Seoul.

The RNCM Seoul International Piano Competition 2026

The competition was the backbone of the week. Fifty-two pianists took part across four divisions, from elementary school to university and open entry, with preliminary rounds on 27 and 28 July and a final for all divisions on 31 July.

The field was a snapshot of the depth of Korean piano training. The high school division drew entrants from the country's leading arts high schools, including Seoul Arts High School, Sunhwa Arts High School, Anyang Arts High School, Incheon Arts High School, Deokwon Arts High School, Chungnam Arts High School and Gyeonggi Arts High School. The university division included students from Yonsei, Hanyang, Kyung Hee, Ewha and Kookmin universities alongside competitors studying abroad at the New England Conservatory in Boston and the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna.

The jury was chaired by Professor Scott, with co-chair Professor Callaghan and Professor Yoo also sitting throughout, joined in each round by a panel of eleven leading Korean pianists and pedagogues. BIEK and RNCM designed the competition's assessment framework to international standards.

At the final on 31 July the jury awarded the Grand Prize to Hyungyu Ji, a student of the New England Conservatory, and the Second Grand Prize to Taegyu Kim of Seoul Arts High School. Division first prizes were awarded in the elementary, middle and high school categories.

Professor Scott was unequivocal in his assessment. The standard of the Korean competitors, he said, exceeded his expectations and he described the Grand Prize winner as a pianist of exceptional musical temperament and secure technique whose artistic insight and communicative power were deeply impressive. Every prizewinner received a formal letter of recommendation from the RNCM faculty, giving them a tangible advantage in any future application to the College.

Two days of masterclasses

On 29 and 30 July the Rode Arts Center's chamber hall hosted masterclasses with both professors. Students ranging from elementary school pianists to university students each received extended one-to-one tuition on stage, with parents and observers invited to watch.

Masterclasses are where a conservatoire's teaching philosophy becomes visible, and these sessions gave Korean students and their teachers a direct encounter with the RNCM approach: an insistence on sound, on phrasing and on musical intention over mechanical display, delivered with generosity and humour. Professor Scott, who had asked specifically for interpreters fluent in musical vocabulary so that no nuance was lost, worked in fine detail on tone and pedalling. Professor Callaghan, whose own career has been built on curiosity and breadth of repertoire, urged his students to widen their horizons far beyond the exam syllabus, to hear concerts and theatre, to read, to play chamber music with friends and to sight-read music that frightens them a little.

The Faculty Concert: From Shadow to Celebration

World-renowned pianist, Professor Simon Callaghan, performs at the The Faculty Concert

The centrepiece of the week was the Faculty Concert on the evening of Thursday 30 July in the Rode Arts Center's main concert hall. Titled From Shadow to Celebration, the programme moved through Poulenc, Debussy, Beethoven, Schumann, Schubert and Milhaud, tracing an arc from introspection to exuberance, and brought all four artists to the stage: Professor Graham Scott, Professor Simon Callaghan, Jaekyung Yoo and Yunji Kim, performing solo and together on the hall's Steinway concert grand.

The concert sold out. The hall was full of competitors and their families, piano teachers, students from across Seoul and a large number of the city's classical music devotees, and the reception was warm and prolonged. Among the guests were Sarah Deverall, Director of the British Council in Korea, together with senior executives from Samsung Electronics and KT and a number of figures from Korean education, business and public life. The evening was, in every sense, an occasion, and it demonstrated that a concert combining British and Korean artists of this calibre can fill a Seoul concert hall on its own merits.

Henry Aronsson, Partnership Director, BIEK LLP and Sarah Deverall, Director Korea, British Council

RNCM auditions in Seoul

On the morning of Saturday 1 August came the element of the week with the most direct consequence for the students involved. For the first time, the RNCM conducted its own official entrance auditions in Korea. Eleven candidates, nine for undergraduate study and two for postgraduate, auditioned before Professor Scott and Professor Callaghan, exactly as they would have done in Manchester.

The outcomes were exceptional. Candidates seeking entry in September 2027 who met the College's standard were offered conditional offers of admission, and the great majority of those who auditioned earned formal faculty recommendations for future applications. For those students, a week in Seocho has replaced a journey to Manchester, and the door to one of the world's great conservatoires has been opened at a fraction of the usual cost and uncertainty.

The Winners' Gala Concert

The week closed on the afternoon of 1 August with the awards ceremony and Winners' Gala Concert. Professor Scott presented the Grand Prize, Professor Callaghan the Second Grand Prize and BIEK's directors the division prizes, with the full jury on stage. The prizewinners then performed in ascending order of their awards, from the youngest elementary winners through the middle and high school champions to the Grand Prize winner's closing performance, before a full and enthusiastic house.

Speaking at the gala on behalf of the RNCM, Professor Scott called it a wonderful week of music-making, congratulated every prizewinner and every participant, and said that the standard of playing throughout the week had been genuinely impressive. He added that the whole programme, from the masterclasses and the faculty concert to the competition and the gala, had been prepared with great care and professionalism, and that working alongside the BIEK team had been a real pleasure.

Professor Callaghan echoed him. Korean students, he said, had impressed him not only with their ability but with their hunger to learn, and he looked forward to working with BIEK on a wider range of programmes and performances to help Korean students reach the international stage.

How the week was built

An event of this scope does not assemble itself. Global Arts Week 2026 was the product of many months of planning between BIEK's teams in the United Kingdom and Korea, and it showcased exactly the combination of capabilities that BIEK exists to provide.

In Korea, BIEK Korea Director Byeongdo Choi was was responsible for the entire in-country operation: through his leadership BIEK secured the Rode Arts Center and its halls, rehearsal spaces and Steinway, assembling the Korean jury, engaging About Classic Group under its chief executive Lee Dong-hyuk to manage production and ticketing, managing hospitality, a large press, volunteer and interpreting team (Steven Park, Jonathan Moon and Samuel Choi).

Together with Byeongdo Choi, BIEK Partnership Director Henry Aronsson, who co-founded BIEK and built the international relationship, brought the RNCM to the partnership. He worked directly with the RNCM's leadership team and faculty to define the vision for the project and RNCM's long term future in Korea. His directorship negotiated every element that touched the College's name and enabled the success of the event: the day-to-day liaison between the RNCM and the Korean team, the coordination in the run-up to the event and throughout the week and hosting the visiting professors during their stay with the care that characterises every BIEK project.

That two-sided structure, a British team that speaks the language of British institutions and a Korean team that can deliver at the highest level in Korea, is BIEK's defining strength. It is what allowed the RNCM to entrust its brand and its admissions process to a partner in Seoul, and it is the model on which BIEK's wider work is built.

What comes next

The RNCM has confirmed that it wishes to return and both institutions are now planning BIEK Global Arts Week 2027 as the second edition of what will become an annual fixture in the Korean musical calendar. Plans under discussion include the expansion of the competition beyond piano to add orchestral and voice divisions, substantially larger prizes, and a scholarship scheme for competition winners who go on to succeed at RNCM audition, so that the path from a Seoul stage to a British classroom becomes shorter and better supported every year.

The two institutions are also exploring a broader and longer-term relationship. Alongside the annual arts week, BIEK and the RNCM are actively and positively considering the establishment of an RNCM presence in Korea, which would allow Korean students to receive sustained, RNCM-standard tuition at home rather than only during a single week each summer. Those conversations reflect the confidence built during a week in which the College saw at first hand what BIEK is able to deliver.

Global Arts Week sits within BIEK's wider mission of bringing the best of British education to Korea. BIEK is a UK-registered partnership, directed from both London and Seoul, whose board includes some of the most senior names in British education. It is currently progressing the establishment of accredited British international schools in Korea, including the Haileybury project in Taean, Chungcheongnam-do. The music partnership with the RNCM is a natural extension of that work, and a signal of the range of institutions with which BIEK now works.

BIEK would like to thank Professor Graham Scott and Professor Simon Callaghan, the Royal Northern College of Music, Jaekyung Yoo and Yunji Kim, every member of the jury, About Classic Group, the Rode Arts Center, and above all the fifty-two competitors, the masterclass students and the audition candidates whose playing made the week what it was.