Event Details

At the age of 19, Shanghai native Haochen Zhang won First Prize and a Gold Medal at the 2009 Van Cliburn Competition, a distinction shared with Nobuyuki Tsujii of Japan. In doing so, he became one of the youngest winners in the Cliburn’s history and the first from his country to win the top prize. His Cliburn performances were released to critical acclaim by Harmonia Mundi in 2009, and he was featured in the award-winning documentary A Surprise in Texas about that year’s competition.  More than ever today, Haochen captivates listeners with his spellbinding virtuosity and probing musicianship. His busy schedule takes him all over the Americas, Europe, and Asia to perform with many of the world’s most renowned orchestras and conductors, and to appear on its premier solo and chamber music series.

Following early training at the Shanghai Conservatory, Haochen studied under the direction of Gary Graffman at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. Since 2017, he has released several recordings on the BIS label—one with solo works of Schumann, Liszt, Janácek, and Brahms and another of Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev concertos with the Lahti Symphony Orchestra. In 2017, he received an Avery Fisher Career Grant in recognition of his potential for a major career in music. Recently, in 2021, Haochen was featured in Cliburn Masterpiece, a new video series by the Van Cliburn Competition in which he explores Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit.

“Zhang’s dazzling playing is without gimmick or ostentation.” —The Washington Post

“[Zhang’s] aim for lightness, transparency and directness yields poetic results.” —Gramophone

“Such a combination of enchanting, sensitive lyricism and hypnotizing forcefulness is a phenomenon encountered very rarely.” —The Jerusalem Post

“This is an artist whose preternatural virtuosity ever serves as a means to an end, that of creating vivid, expressive, colorful musical ideas... His technique is likely second to none, but his true distinction is his ability to use it in communicating his extra-musical ideas to listeners.” —The Boston Musical Intelligencer

PROGRAM

SCHUBERT
Allegretto, D. 915

SCHUBERT
Sonata in G Major, D. 894

Intermission

LISZT
Transcendental Etudes, S. 139