Han Chen, piano

September 3, 2025, 12:15 pm

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Pianist Han Chen

Pianist Han Chen performs works by Florence Price, György Ligeti and Sergei Rachmaninoff, live from the Seventeenth Church of Christ, Scientist, Chicago.

A fearless performer with seemingly limitless imagination and possessed with uncanny energy, pianist Han Chen plays scores old and new with rare rigor and insight.

Alex Ross, classical music critic of The New Yorker, who selected Mr. Chen’s Naxos disc of the Ligeti Études and Capriccios as a “Notable Classical Recording of 2023,” characterized him as follows: “The Taiwanese pianist Han Chen, a noted interpreter of the Ligeti Études and other modernist repertory, has made a blistering album of the [Liszt] opera transcriptions.” –The New Yorker, September 4, 2023

Mr. Chen has performed as solo recitalist internationally. He is a core member of Ensemble Échappé while regularly collaborating with The Metropolis Ensemble. In 2021, Chen launched Migration Music, an ongoing series of performances and interviews with immigrant composers. Han Chen has studied with Yoheved Kaplinsky, Wha Kyung Byun, and Ursula Oppens at The Juilliard School, New England Conservatory, and CUNY Graduate Center.

Playlist

Some music is excluded from the podcast version for copyright reasons.

Florence Price: Fantasie Nègre No. 1 in E minor

György Ligeti: Musica ricercata

Sergei Rachmaninoff: Études-Tableaux Op. 39 No. 9 in D major