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Hilda Huang, Piano From the Archives
March 31, 2020
Hilda Huang, Piano From the Archives

We are now offering curated recorded programs from our Noontime Concerts archives.

This week we are featuring Hilda Huang, Piano

Program

L.V. Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 29 in B flat Major, Op. 106, “Hammerklavier”

LUDWIG van BEETHOVEN

German Composer of the Classical Era

(1770-1827)

250th Anniversary of His Birth

Grand Sonata for Hammerklavier (Fortepiano) Op. 106 is the twenty-ninth of thirty-two sonatas composed by Ludwig van Beethoven. The work is a celebration of the piano itself by one of the most phenomenal musical intellects of all time.

As Beethoven’s longest, grandest, and most difficult piano compositions, nothing created before or after by anyone surpasses its monumentality. The Hammerklavier sonata is a work that displays all that is quintessentially Beethovenian: drama, emotion, humor, wit, expressivity, convention-defying, musical logic, virtuosity, exultation, humanism, pianistic muscularity, and ravishing lyricism.  Written in the third and last period of his life, Beethoven remains true to his classical roots in this visionary work even though he stretches and relaxes the rules to the extreme.

Hilda Huang

The young American pianist began her international career after winning the first prize at the Leipzig International Bach Competition at age 18, earning the distinction of winning top prizes at three of the world’s most significant international Bach competitions (Würzburg, Tureck). She gave her recital debut at the Leipzig Gewandhaus as part of the Steinway Prizewinners’ Concert Network and subsequently appeared at the Leipzig and Montreal Bach Festivals and the BASF Young Pianists’ series. Hilda Huang’s playing plumbs “philosophical depths” (West-Allgemeine Zeitung) and glimmers with “alluring extroversion” (New York Concert Review); her interpretations flow from a “mind that can multi-task… and ears that can “multi-listen’” (SF Examiner). Her work has been featured on the documentary film, Bach and Friends (2010) and on Discovery Channel’s Curiosity.com. In her debut recording, Hilda Huang performs the Bach Concerto in F minor with the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra for TELARC international (2008, From the Top at the Pops). In the 2019-2020 season, she presents Bach’s Clavier-Ubüng 2, comprising the Italian Concerto BWV 971 and the French Overture BWV 831 on the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts series in Chicago, the Rockefeller Tri-I Noon Recitals series in New York, St Martin-in-the-Fields in London, and the Amsterdam Concertgebouw.

Hilda Huang celebrates Beethoven@250 with performances of selected sonatas, variations and concertos in Germany and the United States.

Hilda Huang presents regular and diverse recitals under the auspices of Thürmer Pianos at venues in Germany, San Francisco Noontime Concerts at Old St. Mary’s Cathedral, the Whitney Center in New Haven, CT, and Evergreen Woods in Branford, CT. She also performs regularly as a chamber musician, having made appearances at Chamber Music Northwest, the Steans Institute at the Ravinia Festival, and the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival. She performs frequently with woodwind instrumentalists and was invited to appear on the Faculty Artist Recitals of David Shifrin, clarinetist, and Frank Morelli, bassoonist at the Yale School of Music.

Hilda Huang studies piano with Melvin Chen and harpsichord and fortepiano with Arthur Haas at the Yale School of Music in pursuit of a Master of Musical Arts. In service to her community, she sits on the YSM Student Advisory Council, teaches a class of piano students at Cheshire Academy in Connecticut, and maintains a private studio in New Haven, CT. She has received further instruction from Malcolm Bilson, Bernd Goetzke, Corey Jamason, Jan Jiracek, Robert Levin, John McCarthy, András Schiff, and Benjamin Simon. Hilda Huang is a 2013 Presidential Scholar in the Arts and received her BS in chemistry Magna cum Laude from Yale College in 2017. She is supported by the Kingsley Trust Association and a 2019 Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship. www.hildahuang.com || @hildahuang7 || hilda.huang@yale.edu (December 2019).