Piano Concerto No 1 / Piano Concerto No 23

"There is much to admire in Helen Huang's performance. Her sound is clear and full, with a tensile strength that never seems muscle-bound and her sense of form is admirable ö she has the makings of a lovely artist."
(Washington Post)

At age 16, Helen Huang can already look back on an impressive list of engagements with such orchestras as the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Saint Louis Symphony, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the National Symphony, the Montreal Symphony, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and the Israel Chamber Orchestra, among other ensembles.

Miss Huang was born in Japan in 1982 to Chinese parents. She moved to the United States with her family in 1985 and began piano lessons two years later. Within a year she had won her first competition and several other honors soon followed. Just after her eighth birthday she made her debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra after winning its student concerto competition. She also won the New York Philharmonic's Young Performers Auditions and performed with the orchestra under its Music Director, Kurt Masur, in December 1992. In 1994 she was selected by the New York Philharmonic to receive Lincoln Center's Martin E. Segal Award for promising young artists and, in 1995, she became one of the youngest recipients of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant.

"Impressive, the way Masur enters into the pulse and rhythm of the music. Conducting without a baton, he shapes the sound with his hands, supports it, carries it."
(Neue Zürcher Zeitung)

Born in Brieg, Silesia, in 1927, Kurt Masur studied piano, composition and conducting at the Music College of Leipzig. Upon graduation, he served as orchestra coach at the Halle County Theater, and later as Kapellmeister of the Erfurt and Leipzig Opera Theaters. He accepted his first major orchestral appointment in 1955, as conductor of the Dresden Philharmonic, and in 1958 returned to opera as general music director of music at the Mecklenburg State Theater of Schwerin. From 1960 to 1964, Kurt Masur was senior director of music at Berlin's Komische Oper, collaborating with Walter Felsenstein, one of opera's most influential directors. In 1967, he was appointed the Dresden Philharmonic's chief conductor, a post he held until 1972.

Kurt Masur, who began his tenure as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic in September 1991, has left his hallmark on an orchestra that has felt the diverse influences of Mahler, Toscanini, Bernstein, Boulez and Mehta in this century. The impact of his leadership has attracted worldwide attention, and his distinctive approach to music-making has won praise from the media as well as the public. For twenty seven seasons, from 1970 until 1997, Kurt Masur served as Music Director of the Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig. Since January 1992 he has also held the lifetime title of Honorary Guest Conductor of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.