Samsung Cultural Foundation is continuing its support for training piano tuning experts for the 10th consecutive year.
The foundation announced on February 10 that it signed a support agreement for the "2026 Samsung Piano Tone Meister Program" with the Korea Piano Tuners Association at Leeum Museum of Art in Yongsan-gu, Seoul on February 9.
Since 2017, Samsung Cultural Foundation has partnered with the association to provide advanced educational opportunities to domestic tuners. Over the past nine years, the foundation has held seven domestic technical seminars to share expertise from overseas masters and dispatched 37 tuners for overseas technical training at world-renowned manufacturers including Steinway and Yamaha. During the pandemic, 13 remote educational videos were produced to minimize gaps in training. In 2022, an intensive course for select participants was launched to strengthen field-oriented expertise.
Starting in 2025, the foundation renamed the initiative "Samsung Piano Tone Meister Program" and expanded its scope. The goal is to cultivate experts who can delicately adjust the acoustic characteristics of pianos and create optimal sound, going beyond simple pitch tuning.
This year, the program will host a domestic technical seminar with approximately 300 tuners from Korea and abroad, along with an intensive training course for 20 promising tuners. Stefan Fritze, technical advisor at Steinway & Sons' Hamburg factory in Germany, will participate in the technical seminar in Pyeongchang in June, delivering specialized lectures focused on concert piano tuning, regulation, and voicing.
The intensive course for 20 selected tuners will run for a total of 10 days in April and June. In April, over six days, domestic piano structure expert Lee Kwon-jae, Bösendorfer piano specialist Park Sung-hwan, and German Meister Jeon Jae-sun will provide intensive tuning instruction at the Korea Piano Tuners Association in Gasan-dong, Seoul. In June, Stefan Fritze will conduct hands-on training covering the entire process of piano tuning demonstration, regulation, and voicing at "Sounds S" in Hannam-dong, Seoul.
Additionally, two tuners will be dispatched to Steinway's education program as part of overseas technical training.
"We hope this program will contribute to elevating the level of piano tuning in Korea," said Ryu Moon-hyung, CEO of Samsung Cultural Foundation. "Samsung Cultural Foundation will continue to support the development of excellent piano tone meisters so that Korean classical music can grow on a more stable foundation."