Helen Huang

Helen Huang is a Taiwanese-American virtuoso pianist known for her sparkling interpretations of Mozart, Beethoven, and Mendelssohn. She also teaches at the Julliard School, and collaborates with Cho-Liang Lin, Paul Huang, and Joseph Lin. She was born in 1982, in Ibaraki, Japan, to Taiwanese parents. She moved with her family to the United States in 1985, and she started playing the piano when she was five years old. Often described as a prodigy, Huang learned very quickly and started winning competitions after her first year of study. She made her public debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1990, and in 1992 she began a long association with Kurt Masur and the New York Philharmonic after winning the Manhattan School of Music Concerto Competition. She also won Lincoln Center’s Martin E. Segal Award in 1994, and the Avery Fisher Career Grant in 1995. That same year, she appeared on her live debut album Introducing Helen Huang, with Kurt Masur and the New York Philharmonic. This was followed by For Children in 1996, and Helen Huang in 1998. After completing the preparatory program at the Manhattan School of Music, she studied with Yoheved Kaplinsky at the Julliard School, where she received the Arthur Rubinstein Prize when she graduated in 2004. She then completed her master’s degree at Yale under the guidance of Peter Frankl, and in 2008, she became employed at the Julliard School as an assistant to Kaplinsky. It was also around this time that she released Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 1; Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 23, Spirit of Chimes: Chamber Music of Zhou Long, and Georg Tintner: Violin Sonatas; Chopin Variations with Cho-Liang Lin. Huang began collaborating with violinist Paul Huang in 2013, and they performed on several tours together and released Kaleidoscope in 2023. Huang performed a series of recitals with violinist Joseph Lin in early 2024, and she continues in her responsibilities with the Julliard School. ~ RJ Lambert, Rovi