Album Notes

As a child, Chinese pianist Hong Xu would do anything to avoid practicing the piano. “I was a rascal,” says Xu. “Sometimes I would watch television at the same time as I practiced and I would get a terrible pain in my neck from craning to see the screen. But my father soon caught on... he would come home and feel the top of the set to see if it was still warm!”

By the time he reached the Wuhan Conservatory, Xu had begun to enjoy the rewards of performing and knew he wanted a life as a concert artist. At 16, he made his orchestral debut with the Wuhan Symphony Orchestra and soon thereafter enrolled at the Eastman School of Music where he studied with Douglas Humphreys. He later studied with Jerome Lowenthal at The Juilliard School. Xu was winner of the Mozart Prize at the Cleveland (2005), Second Prize at the Hilton Head (2004) and Third Laureate Prize at the 2006 Honens International Piano Competitions. Following his Honens win, Xu made his debut at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, performed at the 2008 Beijing Cultural Olympiad, and appeared with the Juilliard Orchestra under the direction of Vladimir Ashkenazy, about which The New York Times wrote, “Mr. Xu was revealed as a technically brilliant, insightful musician of seemingly limitless potential.”