Sa Chen
Together with Lang Lang and Yundi Li, Sa Chen is considered as one of today’s most
important Chinese pianists, a veritable international sensation.
Sa Chen first came to the attention of the public when she appeared on English
television as a sixteen-year-old finalist in the celebrated Leeds International Piano
Competition, playing with the CBSO (City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra) under
Sir Simon Rattle. This concert, given before a captivated audience, was an important
step on the road to her international career.
Sa Chen was born in China. She began studying the piano at Sichuan Conservatory
and later at the Shenzhen School of Art with Dan Zhao, China’s most eminent piano
teacher. After her Leeds success, she went on to study with Joan Havill at the
Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, where she graduated with
distinction in 2000. In 2001 Sa Chen began a period of advanced study with Arie Vardi
at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hanover.
International awards soon came flooding in. Sa Chen has been a guest performer
with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the China Philharmonic and the Warsaw
Philharmonic. She has given recitals at the Wigmore Hall and the Barbican Centre
(London) the Kennedy Centre (Washington D.C.), La Scala (Milan), Carnegie Hall (New
York), the Musikhalle (Hamburg) as well as in Berlin, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Beijing,
Shanghai, Canada, Switzerland, Italy and Los Angeles. A concert tour has taken her
to twelve Japanese cities and Tokyo. She was included among the ‘100 Great Pianists
of the Twentieth Century’ and concert tours with orchestras in the USA and Europe
have rapidly enhanced her international reputation. Festival bookings came flowing
in, one of the most recent being an invitation by Gidon Kremer to play at Les
Muséiques and Lockenhaus Festivals.
Sa Chen has won many distinguished awards, such as the first prize in the 1994
China International Piano Competition, the first prize at Guildhall (London), the Leeds
International Piano Competition where she was the youngest to take part, and the
Warsaw International Chopin Piano Competition in 2000.
In 2005 Sa Chen was the first Chinese prize-winner at the prestigious Van Cliburn
International Piano Competition, Fort Worth (Texas). The following season she
undertook a concert tour of various American cities, and appeared at music festivals
in Beijing, Stuttgart, Hamburg and many other cities.
In September-October 2006 she was soloist with the Köln WDR Symphony Orchestra
in their highly successful Chinese concert tour, conducted by Semyon Bychkov.
Sa Chen’s first CD of piano music by Chopin was released in 2003, and her second,
including a recording made during the Van Cliburn Competition, appeared on
Harmonia Mundi’s USA label.
As part of a long-term exclusive recording contract with the label PentaTone she has
just released Chopin’s Piano Concertos with the Gulbenkian Orchestra and Lawrence
Foster which received high international acclaim.
She was the star attraction listed in the documentation concerning the 2005 Van
Cliburn Competition and throughout America on PBS; also the leading artist quoted
in the Chinese ‘Gramophone’ and the “one to watch” in the UK “Gramophone”
magazine.
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