Acclaimed by critics in the United States and abroad for performances of stunning virtuosity, refinement and communicative power, pianist Ya-Fei Chuang has appeared at festivals including the Beethoven Festival in Warsaw with Christoph Eschenbach, at the European  Music Festival (Stuttgart), the Schleswig-Holstein Festival, the Brahms-Tage, the Bach Festival in Leipzig (Germany), the Shannon Festival (Ireland), Oulu (Finland), Ravinia, Sarasota, the Gilmore International Keyboard Festival, Celebrity Series in Boston, and the Oregon Bach Festival (USA).  She has appeared with the Spectrum Concerts in Berlin, at the Fromm Foundation concerts at Harvard, at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Cambridge (USA), and performed in venues such as the Cologne and Berlin Philharmonien, Schauspielhaus Berlin, Gewandhaus Leipzig, National Philharmonic Hall Warsaw, and in Jordan Hall, Symphony Hall in Boston, as a duo partner with Kim Kashkashian, Robert Levin, and is a member of the chamber ensemble Mistral.  Ya-Fei Chuang has appeared with the members of the Philadelphia Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic and Boston Symphony Orchestra.  Her upcoming engagements include concerts in the Berlin Philharmonie, with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, at the Piano Festival Ruhr, with the New York Philomusica, with the Handel & Haydn Society in Boston’s Symphony Hall, in Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood Festival, in duo recitals with Steven Isserlis, and many returning engagements to festivals.

Prizewinner in the Cologne Inter­na­tional Piano Competition at age 18, Ya-Fei Chuang first performed on television in her native Taiwan at the age of eight and gave her first public recital at age nine.  She won first prize at the nationally televised ‘Genius vs. Genius’ Competition at age ten and first prize at the National Competition (Taiwan) at age eleven. The following year she received unprecedented fellowships and scholarships from several prestigious foundations in Germany and Taiwan that enabled her to pursue pre-college, under­graduate, and masters-level studies at the Freiburg Conservatory (Musik­hochschule) with Rosa Sabater and Robert Levin, completing the six-year course of study in four.  During this time she was awarded prizes including the Basel-Colmar-Freiburg Arts Prize and the Mendelssohn Prize in Freiburg. She subsequently concluded her German studies with Pavel Gililov, receiving a concert diploma (final dgree) at the Musikhochschule of Cologne. In 1993 Ya-Fei Chuang moved to the United States, where she earned a graduate diploma at the New England Conservatory in Boston, with Russell Sherman.  

Ya-Fei Chuang’s mastery of the most challenging solo repertoire is comple­mented by extensive activities as a chamber musician and duo partner, and by her commitment to contemporary music, including world premieres of works by Stanley Walden and Thomas Oboe Lee.  She is represented by ARTRA Artist Management of Chicago.

Concert Reviews

“This fascinating interpreter allowed many small miracles to be discovered…there remained only admiration for a mysterious mixture of sensitivity and an incredible display of strength…a cornucopia with unusual, seductive colours, with moments of thrilling, dappled, pearly piano music…a magnificent pianistic event.”

“…it is scarcely imaginable that [Schubert’s] melody, in its restrained melancholy, could be more beautifully sung.  And Ya-Fei Chuang fulfilled everything, indeed absolutely everything, which is to be expected from the interpretation of [the Liszt] sonata: technical superiority and musical fulfillment of extreme demands, the large-scale breathing of the melodic requirements, the eruptive grasp of the explosive passages, manual presence in those moments of accuracy and dexterity, but above all the mastery of the transitions from one extreme to another, the grasp of cumulative build-ups back to the beginnings of lyrical passages…All in all an interpre­tation that left no wish unfulfilled. An absolutely exceptional recital!”

08/2006