Yuja Wang
Yuja Wang is one of those exceedingly rare pianists to have become a major international presence by her 21st birthday. Having performed by then with such orchestras as the New York, St. Petersburg, and China philharmonics, and the Chicago, San Francisco, and Houston symphony orchestras, she transitioned almost overnight from an unknown but hugely talented teenager to arguably the most famous Chinese-born female pianist. And with a multi-disc recording contract with DG and a schedule of more than 100 concerts yearly, she is one of the busiest on the globe, as well. While she has had success in competitions, Wang owes her sudden fame mostly to her role as a fill-in for superstar pianists who cancel on short notice. Most famously, Wang substituted for Martha Argerich in the Tchaikovsky First with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in March 2007. The reviewers were ecstatic in their praise for her performance. The following year she substituted for Murray Perahia on a concert tour that garnered lavish critical acclaim from Boston to San Francisco. Wang's repertory is broad and quite eclectic, taking in works by Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Scriabin, Rachmaninov, Prokofiev, and others.
Yuja Wang was born in Beijing, China, on February 10, 1987. She began piano lessons at six and had later studies at Beijing's Central Conservatory of Music. She was a prizewinner in the Sendai International Music Competition in 2001. That same year she moved to Calgary, Canada, for studies at the Mount Royal College Conservatory.
Wang won the 2002 Aspen Music Festival Concerto Competition, after which she relocated to the U.S. for studies at the Curtis Institute under Gary Graffman. Her European debut was in Zurich, Switzerland, in 2003, when she performed the Beethoven Fourth with the Tonhalle Orchestra under David Zinman.
In February 2005, Wang launched her career as a "fill-in" when she substituted for Radu Lupu in Ottawa, Canada, for another performance of the Beethoven Fourth. In 2006 Wang was the recipient of the Gilmore Young Artist Award. Wang graduated from Curtis Institute in 2008, and went on that summer to give acclaimed performances of the Liszt B minor Sonata, Brahms Horn Trio, and Prokofiev First Piano Concerto at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. The following year she was invited by Claudio Abbado to play the Prokofiev Third Piano Concerto at the Lucerne Festival. That acclaimed performance was issued on a EuroArts DVD in 2010.
Biography by Robert Cummings Source: allmusic
Watch and listen the videos: Chopin: Concerto Nº 2,
Chopin: 24 Preludes, Op 28, Rachmaninoff: Piano
Concerto Nº 2, Gershwin: Piano Concerto in F major,
Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto Nº 1,Beethoven:
Hammerklavier Piano Sonata, Debussy: Arabesque
Nº1, Tchaikovsky: 2nd Piano Concerto, Gershwin:
Rhapsody in Blue, Brahms: Piano Concerto Nº 1,
Mozart: Turkish March, Shostakovich: 1st Piano Concerto, Prokofiev: Piano Concerto Nº2,
Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto Nº 3, Ravel: Piano
Concerto in G, Debussy: Arabesque Nº 1, Ravel:
Left Hand Piano Concerto, Beethoven: Violin Sonata
Nº 9, Popular Videos (200 videos) and YouTube Mix
Born in 1999, the Franco-Swiss musician Camille Berthollet began cello studies at the age of four in the town of Annecy in the Rhône-Alpes, entering the Geneva Conservatorium ‘Musimax’ program when she was ten. At twelve, she was admitted to the Lyon Conservatorium in the class of Augustin Lefebvre, obtaining honours with the unanimous congratulations of the jury for her music diploma final exam in 2013.
That same year, she was admitted to the Bachelor degree of the Geneva University of Music in the class of François Guye. From the age of ten, Camille was repeatedly awarded the First Prize of the Vattelot-Rampal Competition in Aix-les-Bains and Paris. In 2010, 2012 and 2014 she also won the First Prize of the Swiss Youth Competition for Music and in December 2012 claimed the First Prize of the Popper Competition in Paris. In May 2013, she appeared with the orchestra of the Beauvais Cello Festival.
Camille has taken part in prestigious masterclasses with teachers including Philippe Muller, Frans Helmerson, Gustav Rivinius, Leonid Gorokhov, Susan Moses, Denis Severin, Marcio Carneiro and the Tokyo String Quartet.
From the age of eight, alongside the cello, Camille undertook violin classes with Hong Anh Shapiro in Geneva. These studies were further enriched by courses with Mimi Zweig at the Jacobs School of Music in Bloomington, Indiana University (where she won the Concerto Competition in 2011), as well as courses at the Zakhar Bron School of Music in Switzerland, and in Vienna at the Amadeus School.
In 2012 she was laureate of the Tournoi International de Musique (TIM) competition in Paris. In August 2013, she was awarded 2nd Prize in the prestigious Mary Smart international competition in New York in the under-sixteen category, and in 2014 the 1st prize of the Talents for Europe competition in the under-seventeens. She has performed on Stradivarius and del Gesù violins in Europe, Asia and the United States.
With her older sister Julie, Camille appears often in various duo combinations (violin / cello, two violins, cello / viola, violin / viola). They have won prizes in duo including the First Prize with Special Mention in the Schweizerischer Jugendmusikwettbewerb competition (SJMW) in 2011, 2013 and 2015. They have also qualified together for the finals of the Tournoi International de Musique Competition – the youngest duo ever selected. With their quartet they were invited to open for the Tokyo String Quartet in Geneva during that ensemble’s farewell tour. The sisters were invited to play at the Summit Music Festival in New York in August 2013 as well as for the No.1 classical radio station in New York, WQXR. She is the recipient of a scholarship from the Friedl Wald Foundation.
Camille shot to fame in France and abroad in 2014, at the age of 15, when she was hailed winner in the first edition of the young talent competition Prodiges (Prodigies), produced by Shine France, televised on France 2 and watched by 4.5 million viewers. She has since signed as an exclusive artist to Warner Classics, with the label releasing her premiere recording in October 2015. On the album, entitled Prodiges (Prodigies), she is accompanied by her sister, pianist Guillaume Vincent, and the Auvergne Orchestra, with Gautier Capuçon as special guest.
This debut recital by teenage sisters Camille and Julie Berthollet (Camille plays both violin and cello, Julie the violin) consists of light music, but has an exuberant, fearless quality that suggests deeper things to come. The sisters arrange the program in the manner of a 19th century concert for the general public, with an orchestra trading tracks with a piano in the accompanist slot and a gleeful mix of familiar tunes, ethnic dances, folk-like melodies (here extended forward to Gershwin, whose Summertime gets a highly novel treatment), and movements of serious trios by Schubert, gorgeously played. This would all be enough in itself, but the real fun comes from the constantly shifting roles of the solo violins and cello, variously deployed in arrangements that have in some cases been around for a while (the Gluck tune appears in a setting by Fritz Kreisler), but have never been put together in quite this way. Sample the Paganini Caprice No. 24 and enjoy the deconstruction of Paganini's solo violin work into material for two violins and orchestra. The cleverness with which the whole program is put together belies the lightness of the material, and these are definitely young musicians to watch. Highly recommended.
Review by James Manheim Source: allmusic
Watch and listen the videos: Palladio, Navarra, Caprice nº 24, Nouvel album (clip), Videos Populares
(97 videos), Pablo de Sarasate: Navarra, Danse hongroise Nº 5, Caprice nº 24, Flight of the Bumblebee, Vivaldi: L'été, La vie en rose, Czardas,
Camille and Julie (20 videos), John Williams: Thème
de La liste de Schindler, Gabriel Fauré:Après un rêve, Top Tracks (53 videos), Piazzolla and YouTube Mix.
