Hilda Huang (Piano)

Born: April 19, 1996 - Palo Alto, California, USA

The American pianist, harpsichordist, organist and alto singer, Hilda Huang, born and raised in California’s Silicon Valley, attended Music@Menlo’s Chamber Music Institute for six summers and received her Young Artists’ Certificate from the Preparatory Division of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. She is now pursuing pre-medical studies at Yale College.

Hilda Huang is a sophomore at Yale College, and studies the piano with Deputy Dean Melvin Chen at the Yale School of Music and with John McCarthy, Director Emeritus of the Preparatory Division of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. She has also studied the harpsichord with Dr. Corey Jamason, professor at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. She has participated in master-classes led by Professor Robert Levin, John Perry, Gilbert Kalish, David Finckel and Wu Han, and has also received tutelage in conducting from Maestro Benjamin Simon.

First prize winner of the Bradshaw and Buono international Piano competition in 2007, Hilda Huang has performed in Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall. She has also appeared as soloist at the Carmel Bach Festival in California in 2004, and performed in the Young Artists Concert of the Steinway Society of the Bay Area in 2008. Huang was awarded the first prize in the 2014 Leipzig International Bach Competition in the division of piano, as well as the top prize in the 2010 Würzburg International Bach Competition and the grand, jury and recital prizes at the 2010 Tureck International Bach Competition. She is a 2013 U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts, a 2008 Davidson Fellow and the 2013 gold award recipient from the National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts’ YoungArts Week.

Hilda Huang made her orchestral and recording debut in 2008 under the baton of the late Maestro Erich Kunzel with the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra under Telarc International. She has since performed with the Mitteldeutsches Kammerorchestre, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Symphony Parnassus, the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra and the San Francisco Bach Choir. She has appeared in programs at the Kennedy Center, at the Weill and Zankel Recital Halls at Carnegie Hall, the Leipzig Gewandhaus and the Bach-Archiv Leipzig, and has been interviewed and featured on NPR’s From the Top, Leipzig MDR, BigThink, Discovery Channel’s Curiosity.com, and in Michael Lawrence’s film Bach & friends.

Hilda Huang began her performing career after receiving first prize at the Leipzig Bach Competition at 18 years of age. Her debut recital was presented as part of the Steinway and Sons Prizewinners’ Concert Network at the Leipzig Gewandhaus in cooperation with the Leipzig Bach Archive, and was broadcast live over the Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (MDR Leipzig). Concurrent with recitals at the Le Festival Bach de Montréal, Bachfest Leipzig and on the BASF Young Pianists Series in Ludwigshafen on the same series, she completed her studies at Yale College Magna cum Laude, before resuming her performing career.

At an early age her relationship to Bach’s music was featured in the documentary film, Bach & friends, and was later developed in a research internship at the Leipzig Bach Archive funded by the Goethe-Institute Boston. Hilda Huang has presented the Bach & friends at the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts, broadcast live on WFMT Chicago, St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London, the Tri-Institutional Noon Recitals Series in New York, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, and the Goethe-Theater Bad Lauchstädt in 2019-2020. Since her concerto debut on modern piano with Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, recorded for From the Top at the Pops (TELARC, 2008) and on harpsichord with Nicholas McGegan and the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, she has performed Bach and other Baroque concerti as soloist and continuo keyboardist at Chamber Music Northwest, Music@Menlo, and the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival.

In celebration of L.v. Beethoven’s 250th anniversary, Hilda Huang is scheduled to present L.v. Beethoven projects across Europe and the United States. Following her participation as the only American pianist in the 2019 Wilhelm Kempff Beethoven Masterclasses in Italy, Hilda Huang was invited to contribute to Carnegie Hall’s L.v. Beethoven Piano Sonata Cycle and to work in master-class with Kristian Bezuidenhout in Carnegie Hall’s Beethoven Discovery Week. She will appear in the Beethoven-Frühling Sonata Marathon at the Bosendorfer Salon of the Vienna Musikverein, which will be broadcast at the 2020 Vienna City Marathon, and headline the AGEART/Beethoven celebration at the Max Planck Institute in Cologne. Hilda Huang culminates her season with the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra in their 2020-2021 New Year’s Concerts and in return recital appearances at San Francisco Noontime Concerts.

Hilda Huang received both the Master of Music and Master of Musical Arts degrees from the Yale School of Music as a student of Melvin Chen. During this time, she represented the Yale School of Music at the Kennedy Center’s Conservatory Project and as part of Yale in New York at Carnegie Hall, and studied as a Steans Institute Fellow at the Ravinia Festival. In the fall of 2020, she will begin her studies as a Doctoral Fellow at The Juilliard School as a student of Hung-Kuan Chen. She has received further instruction on modern piano from Richard Goode, Angela Hewitt, Robert Levin, John McCarthy, Anton Nel, András Schiff, and David Shifrin, and studies harpsichord, continuo, and fortepiano with Corey Jamason, Peter Sykes, Arthur Haas, Robert Mealy, and Malcolm Bilson. She was a 2013 Presidential Scholar in the Arts and a 2019 Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow. Hilda Huang is supported by the Kingsley Trust Association.

“Whoever says Hilda Huang must also say Bach” (Leipzig Bach Archive).
“Bach remains an adventure for Hilda Huang” (West-Allgemeine Zeitung).
Her playing glimmers with “alluring extroversion” (New York Concert Review) and plumbs “philosophical depths” (West-Allgemeine Zeitung).
“She has a mind that can multi-task and ears that can “multi-listen’” (San Francisco Examiner).

Sources:
PBS Website (2008)
The Davidson Institute for Talent Development Website (2008)
Jennifer Yiu (July-August 2010)
The Artist (July 2014)
Hilda Huang Website & Facebook profile
Photo 23: Maxwell Tiedemann; Photo 25: Anne Barry
Contributed by Aryeh Oron (September 2009, October 2020); Jennifer Yiu (July-August 2010); Hilda Huang (July 2014)

Hilda Huang: Short Biography | Bach Discography: Recordings of Instrumental Works

Recordings of Bach Cantatas & Other Vocal Works

Conductor

As

Works

Anthony Blake Clark

Harpsichord

Member of Bach Choir of Holy Trinity:
BVHT [C55-8] (2023, Video): BWV 245: Part I

Anthony Blake Clark

Alto

Member of Bach Choir of Holy Trinity:
BVHT [C55-9] (2023, Video): BWV 245: Part II

Ryan Turner

Organ

[C21-31] (2022, Video): BWV 37

Links to other Sites

PBS From the Top: Hilda Huang
Hilda Huang (Davidson Institute for Talent Development) [PDF]
Hilda Huang Loves Bach (From the Top Green Room) [Aug 2009]
On the Day of the Year of Gleen Gould (Glenn Gould Foundation) [Nov 2008]
Interview with Pianist Hilda Huang (Big Think) [Jun 2010]
Hilda Huang (Official Website)
Hilda Huang on Facebook