Yuja Wang
Yuja Wang is a Chinese-born American pianist. She began learning piano at the age of six, and went on to study at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.
By age 21, she was already an internationally recognized concert pianist and signed an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon. Wang currently lives in New York.
Early life and education
Wang comes from an artistic family of Hui ethnicity. Her mother is a dancer and her father is a percussionist. Both live in Beijing.Wang's mother initially hoped her daughter would pursue dance as a career. As a child, however, Wang often amused herself by idly pressing the keys of the family’s old piano, a wedding gift to her parents, which sparked her early interest in playing the instrument. She later joked that she was “too lazy” and much preferred “sitting on the piano bench.” Wang began learning the piano at age six. At age seven, she began studies at Beijing's Central Conservatory of Music. Her early teachers included Zhou Guangren, Ling Yuan, and other renowned piano pedagogues in China. At age eleven, Wang entered the Morningside Music Bridge International Music Festival as the festival's youngest student.
At the age of fifteen, Wang entered the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where she studied for five years with Gary Graffman and graduated in 2008. Graffman said that Wang's technique impressed him during her audition, but "it was the intelligence and good taste" of her interpretations that distinguished her.
Career
Early career
In 1998, at the age of eleven, Wang received third prize in the Ettlingen International Competition for Young Pianists in Germany. Three years later, she won the third prize and the special jury prize at the first Sendai International Music Competition in Sendai, Japan.In 2002, Wang won the concerto competition at the Aspen Music Festival.
In 2003, Wang made her European debut with the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, Switzerland, playing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 under the baton of David Zinman. She made her North American debut in Ottawa with the National Arts Centre Orchestra in the 2005–2006 season, replacing Radu Lupu performing that Beethoven concerto with Pinchas Zukerman conducting.
On September 11, 2005, Wang was named a 2006 biennial Gilmore Young Artist Award winner, given to the most promising pianists age 22 and younger. As part of the award, she received $15,000, appeared at Gilmore Festival concerts, and had a new piano work commissioned for her.
In 2006, Wang made her New York Philharmonic debut at the Bravo! Vail Music Festival. The following season, she performed with the orchestra under Lorin Maazel during a tour of Japan and Korea by the Philharmonic.
In March 2007, Wang's breakthrough came when she replaced Martha Argerich in concerts held in Boston. Argerich had cancelled her appearances with the Boston Symphony Orchestra on four subscription concerts from March 8 to 13. Wang performed Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 with Charles Dutoit conducting.
After 2007
In 2008, Wang toured the U.S. with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields led by Sir Neville Marriner. In 2009, she performed as a soloist with the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, led by Michael Tilson Thomas at Carnegie Hall. Wang performed with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra conducted by Claudio Abbado in Luzern and Beijing, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in Spain and in London, and the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra.In 2009, Wang performed and recorded Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto in G Minor with Kurt Masur at the Verbier Festival, accompanied by Kirill Troussov, David Aaron Carpenter, Maxim Rysanov, Sol Gabetta, and Leigh Mesh. Her performance of Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee" is featured on the Verbier Festival highlights DVD from 2008.
In 2012, Wang toured with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Zubin Mehta in Israel and the U.S., with a performance at Carnegie Hall in New York in September.
Wang toured Asia in November 2012 with the San Francisco Symphony and its conductor Michael Tilson Thomas.
In February 2013, Wang performed and recorded Prokofiev's Concerto No. 2 and Rachmaninoff's Concerto No. 3 with Conductor Gustavo Dudamel and the Venezuelan Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar. Also in 2013, Wang's recital tour of Japan culminated with her recital debut at Tokyo's Suntory Hall.
Wang made her Berlin Philharmonic debut in May 2015, performing Sergei Prokofiev's 2nd Piano Concerto with Conductor Paavo Järvi. The performance was broadcast live through the orchestra's Digital Concert Hall.
In a departure from her previously predominantly Russian repertoire, Wang played Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 9, the Jeunehomme, in February 2016 at David Geffen Hall in New York on four successive nights with Charles Dutoit conducting, then, in her debut with the Vienna Philharmonic under Valery Gergiev in Munich and Paris.
In March 2016, Wang played for three nights in Messiaen's Turangalîla-Symphonie with Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting. In a recital at Carnegie Hall in May 2016, she played Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 29, the Hammerklavier, and two Brahms Ballades and Robert Schumann's Kreisleriana.
Wang performed with the National Youth Orchestra of China for its Carnegie Hall premiere on July 22, 2017, with conductor Ludovic Morlot of the Seattle Symphony, performing Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-Flat Minor.
In March 2019, Wang gave the world premiere of the concerto Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes? by John Adams, composed for Ms. Wang, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under conductor Gustavo Dudamel. She also paid tribute to Kennedy Center Honoree Michael Tilson Thomas with a rendition of "You Come Here Often?" in 2019. During 2020 and early 2021, many of Wang’s scheduled appearances were cancelled or postponed due to the pandemic. As concert activity gradually resumed, she returned to the stage in late 2021.
On 13 October 2022, Wang performed the world premiere of Piano Concerto No. 3 by Magnus Lindberg with the San Francisco Symphony at Davies Symphony Hall.
On January 28, 2023, Wang performed all four Rachmaninoff piano concertos and his Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini in a single concert with the Philadelphia Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, a feat conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin likened to climbing Mount Everest. An audience member collapsed during the last movement of the Piano Concerto No. 2, causing the concert to be paused while they received medical attention. The movement was restarted 20 minutes later. After completing the final concerto, Wang played “Dance of the Blessed Spirits” from Christoph Willibald Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice as an encore.
In January 2024, Wang was named by Gramophone as one of the “50 Greatest Classical Pianists on Record.”
On 24 March 2024, Wang was appointed as the Mary and James G. Wallach Artist-in-Residence of the New York Philharmonic in the 2024–25 season. In October, she signed general management to Askonas Holt and Opus 3 Artists.
On 23 September 2025, Curtis Institute of Music announced the appointment of Wang as Artist Collaborator, Piano, effective for the 2026-27 academic year.
For the 2025-26 season, she is scheduled to open major U.S. orchestras including the San Francisco Symphony and perform at Carnegie Hall and other major venues.
Regular collaborators
Wang has performed with all the major orchestras in the U.S., including the Boston Symphony Orchestra; Chicago Symphony Orchestra; Cleveland Orchestra; Los Angeles Philharmonic; New York Philharmonic; Philadelphia Orchestra; Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra; San Francisco Symphony; St. Louis Symphony Orchestra; and the National Symphony Orchestra.Internationally, Wang has performed with the Berlin Philharmonic; Czech Philharmonic; Vienna Philharmonic; Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra; London Symphony Orchestra; Orchestre de Paris; Staatskapelle Berlin; Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks; Gewandhausorchester Leipzig; London Philharmonic; Toronto Symphony Orchestra; Israel Philharmonic; Oslo Philharmonic; NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo; Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra; and the China Philharmonic, among others.
Conducting career
Wang has cultivated a long relationship with Mahler Chamber Orchestra, starting in 2010 with its founder Claudio Abbado, when they recorded the Grammy-nominated album Rachmaninov.In 2017, she ventured into the art of conducting an orchestra with the MCO, leading performances from the piano where she was also the soloist.
Since then, she has expanded her pianist-conductor collaborations to include these additional ensembles: Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Lucerne Festival Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, and NYO-USA All-Stars.
Critical reception
In a review of her 2011 Carnegie Hall debut, Anthony Tommasini wrote in the New York Times:In June 2012, Joshua Kosman of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote that Wang is "quite simply, the most dazzlingly, uncannily gifted pianist in the concert world today, and there's nothing left to do but sit back, listen and marvel at her artistry."
From a May 2013 Carnegie Hall concert, The New York Times reported that Wang's "fortissimos were fearsome, but so, in a quieter way, were the longing melodic lines of the first movement of Rachmaninoff's Sonata No. 2." The reviewer added:
The liquidity of her phrasing in the second movement of Scriabin's Sonata No. 2 eerily evoked the sound of woodwinds. In that composer's Sonata No. 6 she juxtaposed colors granitic and gauzy to eerily brilliant effect before closing the written program with a rabid rendition of the one-piano version of "La valse", accentuating the sickliness of Ravel's distorted waltzes.
In May 2016, The New York Times reviewed her performance of Beethoven's Hammerklavier Sonata:
Ms. Wang's virtuosity goes well beyond the uncanny facility. Right through this Beethoven performance she wondrously brought out intricate details, inner voices, and harmonic colorings. The first movement had élan and daring. The scherzo skipped along with mischievousness and rhythmic bite. In the grave, with great slow movement, she played with restraint and poignancy. She kept you on edge during the elusive transition to the gnarly, dense fugue, which she then dispatched with unfathomable dexterity.
This was not a probing or profound Hammerklavier. But I admired Ms. Wang's combination of youthful energy and musical integrity.
Wang has received attention for her eye-catching outfits and glamorous stage presence as well as for her piano playing. In a much-quoted 2011 review of a concert at the Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles Times classical music critic Mark Swed wrote:
Swed was criticized for this aspect of his review by Anne Midgette in a Washington Post article titled "Which offends? Her short dress or critic's narrow view?"
In 2017, Michael Levin of HuffPost described Wang after her concert with Leonidas Kavakos at David Geffen Hall as "one of the most talented, enthralling, and even mesmerizing performers on the world scene".
In January 2023, Wang's more than four-hour marathon concert of all four Rachmaninoff piano concertos at Carnegie Hall garnered widespread attention and acclaim. Clemency Burton-Hill wrote that "Wang's ability to reconcile the many complexities of the moment with such grace, even joy, was notable." Zachary Woolfe in the New York Times wrote: "virtuosity on this level, in material this ravishing, is elevating to witness – which is why, even after so many hours, I was left at the end feeling an exhilarated lightness."
In May 2024, Wang released her new album, The Vienna Recital, and Gramophone music critic Jonathan Dobson wrote:
Yuja Wang is one of the most gifted and influential pianists of our time. She possesses a technique of flawless precision, phenomenal power and stamina, a rhythmic sense as accurate as an atomic clock, and a diamond-white sound that whatever it lacks in warmth, depth and sonority, it makes up for in sheer clarity, dynamic range and glitter. Wang generates the kind of visceral excitement that Argerich and Horowitz did in their youth. The more difficult and complex the music, the better – and the faster she plays it – as this recital programme from a concert in Vienna in 2022 amply demonstrates.