Ya-Fei Chuang
Pianist Ya-Fei Chuang was trained in her native Taiwan, Germany, and the U.S. and has performed internationally. She is also an important educator.
Chuang was born in 1970 in the Anping District of the city of Tainan, Taiwan. Her father was a police official, and her mother was the director of the local Steiner kindergarten. At eight, she performed on Taiwanese television, and she made her recital debut at nine. She won several national Taiwanese competitions, and by 12, she was attracting scholarship offers to study abroad. Chuang enrolled at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg in a pre-college program, continuing for undergraduate and master's degrees. She completed a six-year program of study in Freiburg in four years and won several prizes, including one at the prestigious Cologne International Piano Competition when she was 18. Chuang's principal teachers in Freiburg were Rosa Sabater and Robert Levin; in 1995, she married the latter, and the two have performed together. Chuang went on for a concert diploma at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz in Cologne, studying with Pavel Gililov, and moving to the U.S. for a graduate diploma at the New England Conservatory in Boston after studies with Russell Sherman. She took master classes with Leon Fleisher, Gilbert Kalish, John O'Conor, and others, and she has worked often with Alfred Brendel, whom she considers a mentor. In 2007, she joined the faculty of the Boston Conservatory at Berklee; she remained there as of the mid-2020s. Chuang began to appear frequently at festivals, and she was featured on a 2010 release titled Edition Klavier-Festival Ruhr, Vol. 23, performing music by Mendelssohn.
Chuang has appeared widely with major orchestras, including the City of Birmingham Symphony, the Berlin Radio Symphony, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestras. Her numerous festival appearances include those at the European Music Festival in Stuttgart, the Ravinia Festival in suburban Chicago, the Tanglewood Festival in Massachusetts, and the Taipei International Music Festival. Chuang's talents extend to both early music and contemporary music; she has performed on the fortepiano with Boston Baroque, the Handel & Haydn Society, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and Concerto Köln, among other groups, and she has given the world premieres of works by such major composers as John Harbison, Stanley Walden, Thomas Oboe Lee, and Yehudi Wyner. In 2019, Chuang released the album Franz Liszt, Frédéric Chopin on the label Le Palais des Dégustateurs. She returned in 2023 on AAM Records, joining Levin, Laurence Cummings, and the Academy of Ancient Music on an album of multiple-piano-concerto recordings of Mozart. Chuang gives master classes around the U.S., Asia, and Europe, including an annual two-week course at the International Summer Academy at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria.
© James Manheim /TiVo
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Discography
5 album(s) • Sorted by Bestseller
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Mozart: Piano Concertos
Academy of Ancient Music, Robert Levin, Laurence Cummings, Ya-Fei Chuang
Klassiek - Released by AAM Records on 3 nov. 2023
24-Bit 192.0 kHz - Stereo -
Henri Dutilleux: D'ombre et de silence
Klassiek - Released by ECM New Series on 16 apr. 2010
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Symphonie n°3 - Trio pour piano
Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Michael Ludwig, JoAnn Falletta, Roman Mekinulov, Ya-Fei Chuang
Klassiek - Released by Naxos on 24 aug. 2010
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Musique de chambre
Robert D. Levin, Julia-Maria Kretz, Bernhard Krug, Ya-Fei Chuang, Jens Peter Maintz
Kamermuziek - Released by Naxos on 28 jul. 2008
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Beethoven, Mozart and Dohnányí Live (live)
Ya-Fei Chuang, Joseph Rabbai, A Robert Johnson, Naoko Tanaka, Ah Ling Neu, Gerald K Appleman
Klassiek - Released by New York Philomusica Records on 5 feb. 2007
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo