Yuja Wang

Hailed by the San Francisco Chronicle in 2012 as ‘quite simply the most dazzlingly, uncannily gifted pianist in the concert world today’, Yuja Wang has captivated critics and audiences around the world since she was named Gilmore Young Artist Award winner at the age of 22 in 2005. Born into a musical family on February 10, 1987, in Beijing, China, she started to play the piano as a child and studied at the Chinese capital's Central Conservatory of Music and the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Following success in competitions, she debuted in Europe playing Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 with the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich and in North America with the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa, Canada. She toured America with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields conducted by Neville Marriner and also toured with the Royal Philharmonic and the Israel Philharmonic. She made her recording debut with Sonatas & Etudes By Chopin, Scriabin, Liszt & Ligeti in 2009, which rose to number 21 on Billboard’s Classical Albums chart. Her album Transformation: Stravinksy, Scarlatti, Brahms, Ravel (2010), was another success and hit number 17. Her 2011 album Rachmaninov peaked at number 21 while her albums Fantasia (2012), Rachmaninov #3/Prokofiev #2 (2013) and Ravel (2015) all reached number 9 on the Classical Albums chart. Further successful albums by Yuja Wang include Ravel: Complete Orchestral Works (2016), The Berlin Recital (2018), Rachmaninoff & Brahms (2022), and several albums in 2023 including The American Project, Rachmaninoff: The Piano Concertos & Paganini Rhapsody, and the live archive release The Verbier Festival Debut Recital 2008.