Jian Wang - Overview | Deutsche Grammophon

“She played with dazzling virtuosity, flawlessly handling the intricate passages with remarkable clarity and lightning fast speed and adding delicate embellishments and personal touches that made the music feel wonderfully fresh and spontaneous.”

Bachtrack on Yuja Wang’s performance of Rhapsody in Blue with the New York Philharmonic (January 2025)

Pianist Yuja Wang is widely recognised as one of the most important artists of her generation, hailed for her supreme musicianship, insightful interpretations and charismatic stage presence. Despite her prodigious virtuosity and technical control, however, she herself believes technique should never be an end in itself, that it should always serve the cause of emotional expression and musical interpretation. Her work has been honoured with many accolades and prizes, including a GRAMMY® Award (“Best Classical Instrumental Solo”) for her 2023 album The American Project.

Yuja has performed with all the world’s major orchestras, under such prominent conductors as Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim, Gustavo Dudamel, Lorin Maazel, Neville Marriner, Zubin Mehta, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Andris Nelsons, Sir Antonio Pappano, Sir Simon Rattle, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Yuri Temirkanov, Michael Tilson Thomas and Pinchas Zukerman, and is currently an Artistic Partner of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra.

Her chamber partners include cellist Gautier Capuçon, violinist Leonidas Kavakos and clarinettist Andreas Ottensamer, and in the 2024–25 season she teamed up with fellow Yellow Label artist Víkingur Ólafsson for a hugely successful piano duo tour of Europe and North America. Together they wowed audiences and critics wherever they went: “their Carnegie Hall duo recital proved that differences can be complementary rather than oppositional, yielding music-making that thrived on spontaneity and an unwavering commitment to detail” (Seen and Heard International). 

Having signed an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon in January 2009, Yuja has gone on to record an ever-growing series of critically acclaimed albums. Sonatas & Etudes, her solo debut recording (April 2009), earned her a first GRAMMY® nomination, while Gramophone named her “Young Artist of the Year”. She then won a “Young Artist of the Year” ECHO Award for her 2010 album, Transformation, a carefully constructed solo programme featuring Brahms, Ravel, Scarlatti and Stravinsky. Her 2011 release of Rachmaninoff’s Second Concerto and Paganini Rhapsody with Claudio Abbado and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra was GRAMMY®-nominated in the “Best Classical Instrumental Solo” category.

Fantasia, released in 2012, offered a collection of encore pieces by Albéniz, Bach, Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Saint-Saëns, Scriabin and others. This was followed by a live recording of Prokofiev’s Concerto No. 2 and Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 3 with Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra. Issued in 2015 and recorded with the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich and Lionel Bringuier, Yuja Wang: Ravel pairs Ravel’s two piano concertos with Fauré’s Ballade. Captured live, The Berlin Recital (2018) explores the expressive worlds of solo works by Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, Scriabin and Ligeti. The album won that year’s Gramophone Award in the Instrumental category as well as another GRAMMY® nomination.

Yuja Wang’s world premiere recording of John Adams’ Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes?, made live with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel, came out in 2020. Her interpretation of the new piano concerto, commissioned by the orchestra and written for her, earned her the 2021 OPUS KLASSIK Concerto Recording of the Year/Piano award. In September 2022, the pianist released her first album with her “super trio” chamber colleagues Gautier Capuçon and Andreas Ottensamer, featuring landmark works by Rachmaninoff and Brahms.

Then came The American Project, presenting the world premiere recording of a major new piano concerto written for her by Teddy Abrams. Also featuring Michael Tilson Thomas’s improvisatory You Come Here Often?, the album was made with the Louisville Orchestra, conducted by Abrams, its Music Director. The American Project was released in March 2023, earning Yuja her first GRAMMY® win the following February.

In September 2023 DG issued her interpretations of Rachmaninoff’s four piano concertos and the Paganini Rhapsody with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel, recorded live at Walt Disney Concert Hall as part of the Rachmaninoff 150 celebrations (“Yuja Wang blazes and dazzles, while maintaining amazing finesse” – Limelight). This was followed by another live album, this time featuring a programme of solo works by Albéniz, Beethoven, Ligeti and Scriabin from the Vienna Konzerthaus. The Vienna Recital was released in May 2024, Gramophone noting that “what can sound like conventional accompaniments in other hands bristle with interest, as [Yuja] pulls surprises from the background like a magician pulling rabbits from a hat”.

Her next album too featured a live recording – Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie, captured with ondes Martenot player Cécile Lartigau, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Andris Nelsons during the BSO’s “Music of the Senses” Festival in April 2024. The album was digitally released in December 2024 to coincide with the 75th anniversary of the work’s world premiere, with a CD release following in July 2025.

Yuja again joined forces with Nelsons and the BSO to record music by Shostakovich: his two piano concertos, No. 1 in C minor and No. 2 in F major, and six of his Preludes and Fugues for solo piano, chosen by the pianist from the composer’s Opp. 34 and 87. Her acclaimed readings (“In Yuja Wang’s hands the music comes across as delightfully playful, quick to register variety. Hardly any extended passage passes by without her lighting upon quicksilver changes of colour and accent” – Financial Times) were released as part of the BSO’s award-winning and comprehensive Shostakovich anthology in March 2025 and as a standalone album two months later.

She begins her 2025–26 season with a series of performances in the US, appearing at the San Francisco Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra and Carnegie Hall season-opening galas (12 September−7 October), as well as playing Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto with the BSO and Domingo Hindoyan (23‑25 October). Another key work in her 2025–26 schedule is Ligeti’s Piano Concerto, which she performs in Rotterdam and Eindhoven (30/31 October & 2 November), as well as in Louisville, Kentucky (21/22 November) and Cleveland, Ohio, where she pairs it with Ravel’s Concerto for the Left Hand (28–30 November). She returns to Prokofiev’s Concerto No. 2 in Toulouse, Dortmund and Paris (5/6, 9 & 12/13 November), and in Vienna and Amsterdam (4/5 & 12/14 December).

Yuja Wang was born into a musical family in Beijing and, as an infant, watched her mother, a dancer, rehearse Swan Lake. The experience resonated long after her first encounter with Tchaikovsky. She began picking out melodies on the family piano and received her first lessons at the age of six. Rapid progress led to a place at the Beijing Conservatory. Yuja’s musical and personal development accelerated in 1999 when she moved to Canada to join the Morningside Music summer programme at Calgary’s Mount Royal College; she soon became the youngest ever student at Mount Royal Conservatory. In 2002 she won the Aspen Music Festival’s concerto competition; she also enrolled to study with the distinguished concert pianist and teacher Gary Graffman at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.

Yuja’s professional career was already underway by the time she graduated from Curtis in May 2008. She attracted media attention in Canada in 2005 following a sensational debut with the National Arts Centre Orchestra that prompted one newspaper to headline its review, “A star is born”. Her international breakthrough came in March 2007, when she replaced Martha Argerich at short notice as soloist in Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto with the Boston Symphony Orchestra – this resulted in a string of invitations to appear with other leading orchestras and conductors at the world’s most prestigious venues, thus launching her global career.

7/2025