Eight of the Saddest Piano Concerto Slow Movements

by Emily E. Hogstad 

If you’re a classical music fan drawn to sad, slow movements in piano concertos, this is the list you’ve been looking for.

Whether it’s Chopin’s gentle melancholy, Ravel’s elegant wistfulness, or Rachmaninoff’s romantic despair, each of these slow movements paints a picture of a particular kind of sadness.

© chopinacademy.com

Although every ranking having to do with classical music is subjective, we numbered our picks anyway, from least sad to saddest. Find out which concerto we’ve dubbed the saddest at the end.

8. Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 1, Mov. 2  

Chopin wrote this concerto in 1830 when he was just twenty years old.

The inspiration behind this piece is unclear…but we know there was one.

Frédéric Chopin in 1849

In a letter, Chopin wrote a cryptic observation to his best friend (and potential crush or even lover) Tytus Woyciechowski:

“Here you doubtless observe my tendency to do wrong against my will. As something has involuntarily crept into my head through my eyes, I love to indulge it, even though it may be all wrong.”

It’s a mysterious confession. Some believe he’s referring to his other crush, singer Konstancja Gładkowska. Others wonder if he’s referring to Woyciechowski, with whom he exchanged a number of romantic letters as a young man.

Chopin wrote to Woyciechowski about the slow movement in particular:

“It is not meant to create a powerful effect; it is rather a Romance, calm and melancholy, giving the impression of someone looking gently towards a spot that calls to mind a thousand happy memories. It is a kind of reverie in the moonlight on a beautiful spring evening.”

The specific sadness of this music is a gentle, possibly flirtatious melancholy.

7. Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 2, Mov. 3   

Brahms’s second piano concerto covers similar emotional territory to the Chopin Romance. Save for a brief stormy interlude in the centre of the movement, this is not overtly tragic music: it’s more brooding, repressed melancholy.

Johannes Brahms, ca 1875

The movement begins with a soulful cello solo (an idea that Brahms may have lifted from his dear friend Clara Wieck Schumann, who had included similar instrumentation in the piano concerto she’d written as a teenager decades earlier).

The final portion of the movement, where the cello returns again and moves with the piano through a number of keys together, is the absolute epitome of bittersweet regret.

6. Bartók: Piano Concerto No. 3, Mov. 2   

Béla Bartók composed his third piano concerto in 1945 when he was 64 years old. He was terminally ill with leukaemia at the time.

That October, his wife, pianist Ditta Pásztory-Bartók, was set to celebrate her 42nd birthday. He began working on a third piano concerto for her as a birthday present. He was hopeful that after his death, whenever it occurred, she could tour with it and make money.

Béla Bartók in the 1920s

Tragically, he died in late September, a month before her birthday. Fortunately, the piano concerto, save for the final seventeen measures, was completed.

The slow movement of this concerto feels like a hushed, tender, intimate goodbye. Regret and wistfulness are mixed in with profound gratitude.

5. Ravel: Piano Concerto, Mov. 2   

Ravel wrote of his piano concerto:

“My only wish…was to write a genuine concerto, that is, a brilliant work, clearly highlighting the soloist’s virtuosity, without seeking to show profundity. As a model, I took two musicians who, in my opinion, best illustrated this type of composition: Mozart and Saint-Saëns…”

Maurice Ravel

In particular, he looked to Mozart’s clarinet quintet for inspiration. That melody is an unusual twenty measures long. In his concerto, Ravel’s melody is an astonishing thirty-four.

“That flowing phrase!” he wrote later. “How I worked over it bar by bar! It nearly killed me!”

This long melody calls to mind a long, wistful train of thought from the middle of the night, when nothing in the darkness interrupts the thought.

This music is sad in a restrained way. A listener can feel a great depth of sorrow hiding just beneath the surface.

4. Shostakovich Piano Concerto No. 2, Mov. 2   

Shostakovich wrote his second piano concerto for his pianist son Maxim’s nineteenth birthday in 1957. Maxim premiered it at his graduation concert at the Moscow Conservatory that May.

Over the past few years, father and son had suffered a great deal together. In 1954, Maxim’s physicist mother, Nina, had died suddenly. Maxim was just sixteen. Shostakovich was forced to become a single father overnight: a role he was completely unprepared to play.

Dmitri Shostakovich

The slow movement of this concerto evokes emotions that a father and son might feel upon seeing a son graduate after the death of a beloved wife and mother: pride, yearning, and a sadness that is simultaneously quiet and deeply intimate.

3. Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 23, Mov. 2   

Mozart wrote his 23rd piano concerto in early 1786, two months before the premiere of one of his best-loved operas, The Marriage of Figaro.

A listener can immediately hear the influence of opera here. It’s especially dramatic because the piano is alone when it enters with its atmospheric, aria-like, minor-key melody.

Croce: Mozart Family Portait (detail), 1781

Starting the movement with a solo part creates a kind of sudden, intense intimacy between the soloist, composer, and audience.

2. Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 4, Mov. 2   

The orchestral introduction to this slow movement is loud and brutally unforgiving. The piano answers with a sense of quiet despair.

That conflict and dialogue create the narrative that drives the entire movement.

Beethoven in 1803

Three movements into their unnerving conversation, the piano takes over for a solo turn. We discover that the piano still has fight in it, with a series of loud ringing trills, before sinking back down into a whisper again.

When the orchestra returns, it is also quiet, witnessing the piano’s unraveling.

1. Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 2, Mov. 2   

Here it is: the saddest slow movement of a piano concerto: the Adagio sostenuto from Rachmaninoff’s second piano concerto.

This movement begins with slow, hushed chords in the strings, followed by a mournful chain of arpeggios in the piano.

The winds contribute hushed fragments of a heartbreaking theme to the steady accompaniment of the piano.

When the soloist and the orchestra players begin interacting with one another, it feels like a confessional conversation. The music conveys all kinds of sadness: grief, regret, yearning, and more, appearing in all different types of musical colours and textures.

Kubey-Rembrandt Studios: Sergei Rachmaninoff, 1921

Rachmaninoff wrote his second piano concerto while coming out of a severe period of depression. For a while, he was seeing a therapist daily. It seems that writing this concerto helped him to process what he needed to.

His composing career continued for decades afterwards, and this work became one of the most beloved piano concertos ever written. It’s sad music…but it had a happy ending.

The Seven Most Popular Piano Concertos on YouTube

by Emily E. Hogstad

YouTube is full of brilliant piano concerto performances, but a handful have attracted truly massive global audiences.

From Rachmaninoff (lots and lots of Rachmaninoff…) to Mozart to Chopin, here are the seven most viewed piano concerto performances on YouTube, along with our commentary about each, in reverse countdown order.

And not to sound like a YouTube title cliche, but the most popular one might surprise you!

7. Frédéric Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 1 by Olga Scheps

Olga Scheps is a German pianist born in 1984, who is especially passionate about the works of Chopin.

This performance of his first piano concerto was recorded in 2014 with the Chamber Orchestra of Polish Radio.

Scheps brings an elegant, lyrical touch to this repertoire. Every phrase conjures some new gradation of emotion. She concentrates hard while still being clearly delighted by the music she’s playing, and that combination is irresistible.

The performance’s intimate atmosphere is enhanced by the smaller chamber orchestra.

6. Sergei Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 3 by Yunchan Lim 

Yunchan Lim’s winning performance from the 2022 Van Cliburn Competition made him a classical music superstar overnight…and this performance is a major reason why. Even videos just commenting on this video have millions of views!

Rachmaninoff’s Third Concerto is notorious for its countless demands, both technical and emotional, but Lim vanquishes all of them with an ease that verges on preternatural.

His poise, control, and intensity are jaw-dropping. (Did we mention he’s only eighteen in this video?)

This performance is a must-listen for any modern piano lover.

The performance went so viral that the Van Cliburn Competition actually posted a second version featuring remastered audio. That one has 4.9 million views of its own. If you combine the two, it would place number four on this list.

5. Frédéric Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 1

Here’s another competition-winning video that went viral: a performance of Chopin’s first piano concerto by Seong-Jin Cho, who won the 2015 Chopin International Piano Competition.

Cho’s interpretation is refined and heartfelt, with a natural elegance that makes even difficult passages seem effortless.

It’s sheer joy to watch him finish the concerto; he looks like he’s in his own little world of musicmaking, and we’ve been lucky enough to get to spy on it.

4. Sergei Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 2 by Nobuyuki Tsujii  

The musicality of blind pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii touches audiences deeply.

He learns music by ear, which enables him to learn (and hear) this music in a different way from other performers.

His technical mastery is remarkable, as is his heartbreaking sincerity.

The YouTube heatmap reveals that the most popular part of the performance is the ebullient ending from 30:45 on, where all of the sad loneliness of the first two movements turns into hard-won triumph. It’s mysterious and moving.

3. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 21 by Yeol Eum Son  

This performance is from the final round of the 2011 Tchaikovsky Competition, where pianist Yeol Eum Son would go on to win the silver medal.

It’s a lovely performance. Her touch throughout is beautifully measured. Every phrase has something to say, and serves a purpose within the longer musical line.

The concerto’s most famous part is its slow movement, which begins at 15:05. It was used in the movie Elvira Madigan, which has become the concerto’s nickname.

2. Sergei Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 2 by Anna Fedorova  

Anna Fedorova’s rendition of Rachmaninoff’s second piano concerto is the kind of performance that hits a listener squarely in the center of the chest: full-blooded and deeply personal.

Filmed at the Royal Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, this video is shot in a way that emphasises the architecture of the hall, as well as the way that the hall’s audience is wrapped tightly around the musicians. It lends a sense of intimacy to both the music-making and the cinematography.

Fedorova’s ability to balance power and restraint makes the concerto especially moving. Listen at 4:20 to how she treats the dreamy ascending and descending passages, then immediately follows those up with a quicksilver fleetness.

1. Cat Concerto from Tom and Jerry by Yannie Tan

66 million views   

Here’s the most-viewed piano concerto video on YouTube. Turns out it’s not actually a piano concerto at all: it’s a version of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, as arranged for the cartoon Tom and Jerry, performed by pianist Yannie Tan.

It’s cute, fun, and completely unexpected. The result is pure piano joy…complete with a cat ear costume.

Conclusion

From Rachmaninoff’s second concerto to Rachmaninoff’s third concerto, from Chopin to Chopin, and from Mozart to a concerto for a cat, all seven of these performances prove how compelling piano concerto videos can be to online audiences.

Which one of these seven is your favourite? And which pianist do you think will be the first to break 100 million views?

Why D-Flat Major Should Be One of Our Favorite Keys

 by Janet Horvath

“What? D-Flat Major?” Most string players wail, “that’s a key signature with FIVE FLATS!”

I don’t blame them. It’s so much more difficult to play in tune on string instruments without the resonance of the open strings.

Pianists, though, will be elated. They get to play on all of the black keys. Numerous composers have used D-flat major to depict lush, dreamy sounds, and to explore the richness and depth of expression imaginable in this key.

Perhaps you know that many composers associated specific emotions with certain keys. The key of E-flat major is a case in point, a key that is considered heroic. Think Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 The Eroica, Strauss’ Ein Heldenleben, a Hero’s Life, and dozens of string quartets and symphonies by Haydn, Sibelius, Elgar, Dvořák, Mozart, Bruckner, Shostakovich, Mahler.

Frédéric Chopin © Getty Image

One of the most famous piece for piano in D-flat is the Chopin Prelude Op. 28 No. 15 “Raindrop.” Chopin did not ascribe the name to this prelude. It begins hushed and pensive, and the affecting melody leaves us in a subdued mood. It turns suspenseful, becoming more chordal and powerful. The right hand continues the inexorable rhythm and generates the feeling of inevitability with its repeated and steady A-flats that seem to imitate raindrops. But the opening melodic line returns reassuring us, and the piece resolves peacefully. Whatever you imagine when you hear it, there is no denying the emotions generated.

Jean Sibelius

Romance in D-flat is an exquisite piece by Sibelius. Upon first hearing, you might think it’s a work of Chopin and I wouldn’t blame you. It’s amorous with flourishes and emotions you would associate with Chopin. Sibelius is not necessarily known as a solo piano composer. Ten pieces make up Sibelius’ Opus 24, composed between 1895 and 1903, and they are stunning. Diverging from his huge symphonic works puzzled Sibelius’ children too who asked him why he wrote these solo piano works, he responded, “In order for you to have bread and butter.”    

Sergei Prokofiev © Esoterica Art Agency 2018

Written in 1901 as a birthday gift, the D-flat major Romance has been published and performed separately. The Andantino opens with a two-bar chordal introduction in the right hand with a lyrical cello-like melody entering in the left hand. It’s gorgeous. The middle section becomes vibrant and agitated with octaves and chords marked with accents on each note, and the instruction, “forte crescendo possible.” A cadenza with rapid notes, is breathtakingly dramatic. The magnificent resonance achieved in this piece is due in part to the pianist flying all over the black keys.

Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 1, Op. 10 was composed in 1911, and is dedicated to the Russian composer, pianist, and conductor, the “dreaded Tcherepnin” with whom Prokofiev worked at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. Although the piano concerto is only fifteen minutes long, in one movement, Prokofiev marked eleven distinct sections of varying tempos and disposition. From charm to the grotesque, every mood is depicted. The piece begins as it ends with an expansive, yearning, and deliberate theme in D-flat major with heart-thumping punctuation in the timpani. Electrifying octaves in the piano bring the piece to a finish.

Gabriel Fauré

Gabriel Fauré Cantique de Jean Racine, Op. 11 is a work for mixed chorus and piano or organ, with lyrics by the 17th-century poet Racine. A version for strings and harp is breathtaking. The text “Verbe égal au Très-Haut” or Word One with the Highest, is from a Latin hymn “O Light of Light” attributed to the fourth century bishop of Milan, St. Ambrose. The refined and sublime piece hints at the music of the Requiem Fauré composed later in life. Only 20 years old when he composed this piece, we are assured of his position as one of the greatest composers of French choral music when we hear the Cantique. A dazzling lilting melody opens the piece. The chorus enters with the lowest voices first and gradually expands to include the higher voices. After another interlude of the instruments alone, Fauré continues this technique and we experience a ravishing series of colors, dynamics, and textures, enhanced by the resounding key of D-flat.

Antonín Dvořák

Dvořák Scherzo Capriccioso Op.66 B.131, is an orchestral work composed in 1883. The D-flat major key allows the composer to explore not only the Czech folk music we usually expect but a more dark, opaque, and restless mood. Featuring a full complement of instruments such as the harp, triangle, English horn, and bass clarinet, Dvořák achieves a brilliant variety of tone colors and wondrous melodies, his forte. The English horn solo is especially poignant.

Amy Beach © Amybeach.org

Some composers actually see colors when he or she hears certain keys or pitches, a condition called synesthesia, in other words the perception of one sense through another. Amy Beach was one of these composers and D-flat major, for Beach, represented the color violet, traditionally associated with wealth, royalty, and the divine. The first section of her 1925 work Canticle of the Sun a cantata for chorus, soloists, and orchestra Op. 123, sets a thirteenth century text by St. Francis of Assisi. The piece begins Lento con Maesta, with the feelings of searching, of hesitancy, and then bursts into the key of D-flat major—the strong D-flat major chord used on the word “God” imbuing the word with wonder and veneration. The use of the key here is powerful as well as opulent.

I’m convinced and I hope you are too. D-flat major should be considered one of our favorite keys!

Ten Greatest Women Pianists of All Time

by Emily E. Hogstad, Interlude

From the time the piano became a popular instrument in the mid-eighteenth century, thousands of accomplished women pianists have taken to the stage.

So many women have done so that it’s impossible to make an objective list of the ten greatest women pianists of all time.

However, there’s nothing keeping music lovers from creating their own subjective lists.

Here’s one such subjective list, featuring some of the greatest women pianists who were born between 1751 and 1987.

Let us know who would be on your list!

Maria Anna Mozart (1751–1829) 

Maria Anna Mozart, nicknamed Nannerl during her childhood, was Wolfgang Amadeus’s older sister.

Their father, Leopold, began teaching her keyboard when she was seven years old. She immediately proved to be a prodigy and was a full-blown virtuoso by eleven.

Maria Anna Walburga Ignatia Mozart by Pietro Antonio Lorenzoni © madamegilflurt.com

When the Mozart family first began touring Europe, Nannerl was initially the bigger draw and was often given top billing over her brother.

During her career, she played for aristocrats and royal families in Austria, Germany, France, Switzerland, and Britain.

After she turned eighteen and became of marriageable age, her family withdrew her from the concert platform. She was forced to watch from the sidelines as Wolfgang continued his travels and musical education in Italy without her.

She married a widowed magistrate in 1784 and moved to a home thirty kilometres from the family hometown of Salzburg. She had three children of her own and also helped to raise her husband’s five children from his previous marriages.

She continued to play the piano for multiple hours a day. Even after her husband died, she continued playing and teaching.

Maria Szymanowska (1789–1831) 

Maria Szymanowska was born to a wealthy family in Warsaw in 1789.

We don’t know for sure how she began her musical life, but it seems likely that she studied with Frédéric Chopin’s teacher, Józef Elsner. She gave her first public recitals in 1810, the year of Chopin’s birth.

She also married in 1810 to a man named Józef Szymanowski. They would have three children together, including a set of twins. They separated in 1820.

Maria Szymanowska

Szymanowska made several tours during her marriage, but her touring activities ramped up in the 1820s. During that decade alone, she appeared in Germany, France, Britain, Holland, Belgium, Italy, and Russia.

She composed works for piano that were deeply influenced by her Polish roots. (Some historians have argued that they influenced a young Chopin.) She became a great favorite in musical salons, and many composers dedicated works to her, including Beethoven.

During her visit to St. Petersburg, she was named First Pianist to the Russian Imperial Court. In 1828, she decided to settle in St. Petersburg, but she died in the 1831 cholera epidemic, cutting short a major career.

Clara Wieck Schumann (1819–1896) 

Clara Wieck was born in 1819 to piano teacher and music shop owner Friedrich Wieck. As soon as Clara was born, he decided he wanted to mold her into a great piano virtuoso.

Robert and Clara Schumann, 1850

Years of intense study followed. True to Friedrich’s prophecy, Clara proved to be one of the most talented pianists of her generation, male or female.

Her life – and classical music – was changed forever when, in the 1830s, she fell in love with her father’s student Robert Schumann.

Her father protested against the marriage for a variety of reasons, but as soon as she was legally able to, they were married in 1840.

The Schumanns had eight children together, but not even motherhood could keep Clara from continuing her performing career.

After Robert’s mental health collapsed and he died in 1856, Clara continued performing, both out of economic necessity and as a kind of therapy to guide her through her grief.

Throughout her life, she advocated for works by her husband, Chopin, Beethoven, and, perhaps most importantly, Brahms, among many others.

She also reshaped the role of the modern virtuoso, helping to popularize the modern recital format and playing from memory onstage.

Teresa Carreño (1853–1917) 

Teresa Carreño was born in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1853.

When she was nine, the family emigrated to New York City, where she began her concert career in earnest. When she was ten, she played for Abraham Lincoln in the White House.

She embarked on her first European tour in 1866. She spent years there, befriending many of the giants of the art: Rossini, Gounod, and Liszt, among others.

Teresa Carreño

In 1873, she married virtuoso violinist Emile Sauret and the following year gave birth to their daughter, Emelita. Sadly, the marriage didn’t last long, and Carreño and Sauret split up.

She would go on to remarry three more times, and have four more children (one of them, Teresita, would become a concert pianist in her own right). Her turbulent love life would become part of her legend.

During the 1870s and 1880s, she spent most of her time touring America, with a couple of trips to Venezuela sprinkled in. In 1889, she returned to Europe to great success. A final large tour to America took place in the 1890s. She died in 1917 in New York City.

Conductor Henry Wood memorably wrote about her:

It is difficult to express adequately what all musicians felt about this great woman who looked like a queen among pianists – and played like a goddess. The instant she walked onto the platform her steady dignity held her audience who watched with riveted attention while she arranged the long train she habitually wore.

Dame Myra Hess (1890–1965) 

Myra Hess was born in London in 1890 and began her piano studies at the age of five. She entered the Royal Academy of Music when she was twelve.

She made her orchestral debut when she was seventeen, playing the fourth Beethoven piano concerto under conductor Thomas Beecham.

Myra Hess

Her career plateaued in the late 1910s due to World War I, but she returned to touring as soon as it was over.

However, arguably her greatest artistic triumph happened during World War II, when she organized nearly seventeen hundred concerts over the course of the conflict, playing in 150.

Concert halls had to be blacked out at night to avoid bombing by Nazi planes. So Hess organized lunchtime daytime concerts at the National Gallery in London.

If bombing prevented a performance from taking place, the series would be relocated temporarily, before returning to the gallery.

Over 800,000 people attended her lunchtime concerts, making it one of the most effective morale boosters of the war.

She suffered from a stroke in 1961 and died from a heart attack in 1965.

Alicia de Larrocha (1923–2009) 

Alicia de Larrocha was born in 1923 into a family of pianists in Barcelona, Spain. She began studying piano when she was three with teacher Frank Marshall, and gave her first performance when she was five. Marshall would remain her only teacher after the age of three.

She began touring internationally in her mid-twenties and enjoyed a vibrant performing career for decades thereafter.

Alicia de Larrocha

De Larrocha was especially celebrated for her advocacy of Spanish composers like Granados, de Falla, and Albéniz.

But her expertise didn’t stop there: her performances of the Germanic composers like Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann, and Mozart were also highly praised.

She even recorded Liszt, despite the fact that she was less than five feet tall and her hands were small.

She recorded extensively throughout her career and won four Grammy awards between 1975 and 1992.

She retired in 2003 after seventy-five years of public performances. She died in 2009, at the age of 86.

Martha Argerich (1941–) 

Martha Argerich was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1941, to a Spanish-Russian family. She began learning the piano at the age of three and gave her debut concert at the age of eight.

In 1955, when Martha was fourteen, the Argerich family moved to Vienna. She began studying there with iconoclast pianist Friedrich Gulda. Two years later, she won both the Geneva International Music Competition and the Ferruccio Busoni International Competition.

Martha Argerich with The Philadelphia Orchestra, 2008 © carnegiehall.org

Despite her success, she found herself in a musical crisis, and she quit playing for three years. Thankfully, she changed her mind, returning to music, and she won the International Chopin Piano Competition in 1965, when she was twenty-four. It was the kickoff to a decades-long performing career.

In the 1980s, Argerich revealed that performing solo recitals made her feel lonely, so since that time, she has focused on repertoire that includes other musicians, such as concertos and chamber music.

In addition to her storied career as a performing artist, she has worked as a teacher and mentor. She is the president of the International Piano Academy Lake Como and has appeared regularly on competition juries.

As of 2019, at the age of 78, she was still performing the Tchaikovsky piano concerto. As one critic wrote in 2016, “Her playing is still as dazzling, as frighteningly precise, as it has always been; her ability to spin gossamer threads of melody as matchless as ever.”

Mitsuko Uchida (1948–) 

Mitsuko Uchida was born outside of Tokyo in 1948. Her family moved to Vienna when she was twelve, and she began studying at the Vienna Academy of Music. She made her recital debut in Vienna at fourteen.

Mitsuko Uchida © Geoffroy Schied

In 1970, when she was twenty-two, she won the second prize in the International Chopin Piano Competition. The prize marked the beginning of a decades-long career.

She has become especially renowned as an interpreter of Mozart. She has recorded all of Mozart’s piano sonatas and concertos, a staggering accomplishment.

If that wasn’t enough, she decided to re-record the Mozart concertos, while also conducting. In 2011, she won a Grammy award for the first record in the series.

She is also famous for being the artistic director at the prestigious Marlboro Music School and Festival, a position she has held since 1999. (She currently shares the position with fellow pianist Jonathan Biss.)

Even today, in her mid-seventies, she is still performing and recording.

Hélène Grimaud (1969–) 

Hélène Grimaud was born in 1969 in Aix-en-Provence, France. She began playing the piano at seven.

She began studying at the Paris Conservatoire in 1982 when she was thirteen, and gave her recital debut in Tokyo five years later.

Hélène Grimaud

She gave important debuts with the Berlin Philharmonic in 1995 and New York Philharmonic in 1999.

In 2002, she signed with the prestigious Deutsche Grammophon label, and in the two decades since has released a number of well-received recordings.

She is noted for her wide interests outside of music. She is deeply involved with multiple wildlife conservation efforts and is also a member of Musicians for Human Rights.

She has also written or co-written four books. Her first, Variations sauvages (Wild Variations), published in 2003, is an autobiography. The cover features a photo of her being greeted by three wolves she has met through her wildlife conservation work.

Yuja Wang (1987–) 

Yuja Wang was born to a musical family in Beijing in 1987. She began studying piano at the age of six and enrolled at the Beijing Conservatory when she was seven.

Yuja Wang, 2021

When she was fifteen, she moved to Philadelphia to study at the storied Curtis Institute of Music. She studied there with legendary pianist Gary Graffman for five years. We wrote an article about their teacher-student relationship.

She made her European debut in 2003, at the age of sixteen. Her North American debut came two years later.

Her breakthrough performance is widely considered to have happened in March 2007, when she replaced Martha Argerich at the Boston Symphony, playing Tchaikovsky’s first piano concerto.

Since then, she has been in constant demand at the best orchestras and recital venues in the world.

In 2023, she made headlines for performing all four Rachmaninoff piano concertos and his Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini. Ever a fashionista, she changed into a different dress for each concerto. She even played an encore!

In 2012, Joshua Kosman of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote that Yuja 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.”

The words were prophetic. The rich tradition of women pianists – as well as the broader tradition of pianism generally – is in good hands!