Yuja Wang

Born in Beijing in 1987, Yuja Wang began studying piano at the age of six. She first trained at the Central Conservatory of Music in her native city before moving to Canada when she was fourteen to study at Mount Royal College in Calgary; a year later, she transferred to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where she studied with Gary Graffman and received her Artist Diploma in 2008. Wang made her debut with the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich in 2003, followed by appearances across the United States with the Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco Symphony Orchestras, the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Philadelphia Orchestra. In Europe, she has collaborated with the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic, the Staatskapelle Berlin, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris, the Filarmonica della Scala, and the St. Petersburg Philharmonic. In 2021, she was featured at Lucerne Festival as the summer’s “artiste étoile” and contributed to the Festival’s programming. During the 2025-26 season, she appeared with the Philadelphia and Cleveland Orchestras, the San Francisco Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. Closely associated with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra as an Artistic Partner, Wang toured Spain and the United States with the ensemble. Last November, her cross-genre theatrical installation Playing with Fire: An Immersive Odyssey with Yuja Wang premiered at the Philharmonie de Paris. Wang frequently directs from the keyboard in her appearances as a soloist — most recently, in Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto at Carnegie Hall in New York.  She has also performed in duo recital with Víkingur Ólafsson and collaborated with the British painter David Hockney on an interdisciplinary dialogue of the arts at London’s Lightroom. Her recordings have received numerous distinctions, including a Grammy Award and an Opus Klassik for The American Project with Teddy Abrams.

Lucerne Festival debut in August 2009 performing Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra under Claudio Abbado.

May 2026