Yuja Wang

Yuja Wang was born into a musical family in Beijing. After childhood piano studies in China, she received further training in Canada and at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music under Gary Graffman. Her international breakthrough came in 2007 when she replaced Martha Argerich on short notice as soloist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. 

Recently named Musical America’s 2017 Artist of the Year, Ms. Wang’s forthcoming schedule embraces a broad range of repertory, encompassing everything from Chopin and Shostakovich to Ravel and Schubert. Bartók’s three piano concertos stand as focal points throughout her 2016-17 season, with performances in Cleveland, Dallas, Guangzhou, Stockholm, Taiwan, and Toronto; she performs all three concertos with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in May and June 2017. In 2016-17 she returns to China’s National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) as artist-in-residence. In addition to performing six concerts, she will also lead masterclasses and participate in outreach projects.

Other highlights of Ms. Wang’s calendar include appearances at the 2016 Salzburg, Tanglewood, and Verbier festivals, a return to the Hollywood Bowl, season-opening performances with the Philadelphia Orchestra, and major tours of Asia and Europe with the San Francisco Symphony and the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, respectively. She is also undertakes tours with percussionist Martin Grubinger and violinist Leonidas Kavakos, and embarks on a thirteen-concert European recital tour next March and April.

Yuja Wang became an exclusive Deutsche Grammophon recording artist in 2009. For her debut album, Sonatas & Etudes, she was named Gramophone’s 2009 Young Artist of the Year. Her 2011 release of Rachmaninoff’s Second Concerto and Paganini Rhapsody with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and Claudio Abbado was nominated for a Grammy award in the Best Classical Instrumental Solo category. Subsequent releases include Fantasia, an album of encore pieces by Albéniz, Bach, Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Saint-Saëns, Scriabin, and others; a live recording of Prokofiev’s Piano Concertos Nos. 2 and 3 with Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra, and Ravel’s two piano concertos with Fauré’s Ballade, recorded with the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich and Lionel Bringuier.

Yuja Wang made her San Francisco Symphony debut in February 2006 and became a Shenson Young Artist later that year. She was also the featured artist in the San Francisco Symphony’s 2010-11 and 2013-14 Project San Francisco initiative. She can be heard on the San Francisco Symphony’s Masterpieces in Miniature album on SFS Media performing the Scherzo from Litolff’s Concerto symphonique No. 4.

(October 2016)