Grammy-Nominated Pianist Han Chen Presented By Death Of Classical Concert Series, New York, NY, November 7, 2026

Mr. Chen Will Join Eight Other Pianists To Perform Ellis Ludwig-Leone’s “Quiet Hours.”

 

GRAMMY-nominated pianist Han Chen will be presented by New York City’s popular concert series, Death of Classical, in two concerts on Saturday evening, November 7, 2026, at 7 pm and 8:30 pm, at Christ Chapel at Riverside Church (490 Riverside Drive, New York, NY 10027).

 

Mr. Chen, joined by eight other pianists, will give the world premiere of the complete performance of Ellis Ludwig-Leone’s Quiet Hours. The full formation of the evening will be Timo Andres, Han Chen, Aaron Diehl, Simone Dinnerstein, David Kaplan, Lisa Kaplan, Dan Schlosberg, Adam Tendler, and the composer Ellis Ludwig-Leone himself.

 

Quiet Hours is a set of nine nocturnes dedicated to nine pianists appearing in the November 7 recitals. The album with the same name was released August 14, 2026. The complete program follows:

 

 

General admission of $95 can be purchased on Death of Classical’s event page. For more information, please visit pianist Han Chen’s website.

 

A fearless performer with seemingly limitless imagination and possessed with uncanny energy, GRAMMY Award-nominated pianist Han Chen brings a Romantic sensibility to his interpretations of scores old and new, which he plays with both rigor and insight. Gold Medalist at the 2013 China International Piano Competition and a prizewinner at the 2018 Honens International Piano Competition, Mr. Chen has also been praised by Gramophone as “impressively commanding and authoritative” and further cited by The New York Times for his “graceful touch,” “rhythmic precision” and “hypnotic charm.”

 

Mr. Chen’s musical vision is manifest in his four solo albums focusing on Franz Liszt, Anton Rubinstein, Thomas Adès, György Ligeti, and a concerto album featuring Florence Price’s Piano Concerto in One Movement in D minor (conductor John Jeter, Malmö Opera Orchestra), which was nominated for a GRAMMY Award in the Best Classical Instrumental Solo category.

 

Alex Ross, classical music critic of The New Yorker, who selected Mr. Chen’s 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

 

Reviewing the Ligeti recording in the August 2023 issue of Gramophone, Jed Distler wrote “[He is] one of the few pianists who handles both gnarly contemporary scores and over-the-top Romantic showpieces with equal authority and style. … [H]e surmounts the sophisticated rhythmic challenges of Ligeti's Études to a T, while infusing them with plenty of tonal allure and personality. … Chen aims for clarity and balance over sheer speed, yielding steadier results and more cogent interplay between the hands.”

 

Attending “Infinite Staircase,” Mr. Chen’s recent traversal of the 18 Ligeti Etudes and 18 commissioned companion pieces, George Grella titled his review: “Han Chen’s remarkable playing equal to the genius of Ligeti’s Etudes” and went on to exclaim: “He was astonishing, with some of the finest pianism one has ever witnessed. Beyond sheer dexterity, this was tremendously musical playing, with every phrase clear and pointed in a certain direction, fluid control of dynamics and form, a combination of articulation and force that was hard to believe. One had the feeling that Chen was deep inside the work, opening up every detail of Ligeti’s musical personality.”—New York Classical Review, September 25, 2023

 

Reviewing this event in I Care If You Listen, Lana Norris summarized it as a “marathon of canonical music and new works that displayed exquisite programming, stupendous technique, and forward-thinking expansion of classical music’s best traditions.”—September 28, 2023

 

Mr. Chen is equally a powerful performer of the classic piano repertoire. Reviewing Mr. Chen performing Beethoven’s Sonata No. 29 Op. 106 Hammerklavier, Lee Eiseman of The Boston Music Intelligencer had this to say: “Oxygenated by powerful intellectual bellows and endowed with muscular forearms, Chen didn’t just hammer Beethoven’s formidably relentless and ever-modern challenge to pianists and listeners; with fire and tempering plunges he alternately annealed, welded, sintered, and sensitively stretched the well-wrought iron into impressive curls and shapely forms. His carefully plotted interpretations conveyed nuance and compelling gesture through very well-graduated colorations and dynamics from white hot to warmly glowing. No two repeated chords sounded the same. Chen’s Beethoven seemed to anticipate Berg and Ligeti on this night.”—August 19, 2023

 

Mr. Chen has appeared as soloist with the Calgary Philharmonic, Fort Worth Symphony, Lansing Symphony, Lexington Philharmonic, Hong Kong Philharmonic, National Taiwan Symphony, Xiamen Philharmonic, among others. In December 2022 he made his Lincoln Center debut with Riverside Symphony at Alice Tully Hall performing Mozart’s early masterwork, the Piano Concerto No. 9 Jeunehomme. Mr. Chen has performed as solo recitalist internationally. In demand as a chamber musician, he has performed with New York Philharmonic String Quartet while regularly collaborating with Ensemble Échappé. In 2021, Chen launched Migration Music, an online 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. He recently received his doctoral degree from CUNY. He is represented by Black Tea Music. Mr. Chen is a Steinway Artist.

 

 Ellis Ludwig-Leone has forged a singular career as both a celebrated contemporary classical composer and the creative force behind the band San Fermin. Praised by The New Yorker for his “knack for simultaneously expressing beauty and crisis,” Ludwig-Leone writes music that balances warm, organic textures with moments of complex detail, focusing on the psychological space where wonder and dread meet.

 

Since first gaining international attention as the songwriter and leader of San Fermin—whose 2013 debut led to national television appearances and a devoted global audience—Ludwig-Leone has maintained a prolific dual practice. His works have been performed by world-class institutions including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the BBC Concert Orchestra, and the New York City Ballet, with recordings released on Sony Classical, New Amsterdam Records, and Better Company Records. A recipient of residencies from MacDowell, Yaddo, and the Banff Centre for the Arts, Ludwig-Leone was named the winner of the 2025 Ellis-Beauregard Composer Award.

 

His stage and chamber catalogue includes the dance-driven opera The Night Falls, a collaboration with librettist Karen Russell (Swamplandia!) and choreographer Troy Schumacher that was praised by The New Yorker for its “ingenious, gorgeous score” and named one of The New York Times’ Best Dance Performances of 2023. Ludwig-Leone’s concert discography highlights deep, long-standing creative partnerships with some of today's most adventurous performers. His song cycle False We Hope, written for the Grammy-winning Attacca Quartet, soprano Eliza Bagg, and Ludwig-Leone on piano and synthesizer, was praised by OperaWire as a “thought-provoking journey across a strange and extraordinary soundscape” before appearing at international festivals including Big Ears Festival, Birds of Paradise Festival, November Music Festival, and Við Djúpið Music Festival. In 2024 he expanded this catalogue with Past Life / Lifeline, an EP featuring works commissioned and performed by harpist Lavinia Meijer, violist Nadia Sirota, and the percussion quartet Sandbox Percussion.

 

In August 2026, Ludwig-Leone released Ludwig-Leone: Quiet Hours via Better Company Records—a collection of nine nocturnes written for and performed by nine celebrated pianists (including Timo Andres, Han Chen, Aaron Diehl, Simone Dinnerstein, David Kaplan, Lisa Kaplan, Dan Schlosberg, and Adam Tendler), each recorded on the artist’s own “home” piano. Upon release, a feature on the album in The New York Times prompted a surge of interest in the project; subsequently, Ludwig-Leone organized a concert featuring all nine pianists, presented by Death of Classical on November 7th, 2026 at Riverside Church in New York City.

 

The 2025–26 and upcoming seasons mark a period of major premieres and interdisciplinary collaborations across North America and Europe. Highlights include The Woods, an immersive concert experience created with BalletCollective (Troy Schumacher, director) that enjoyed a sold-out run at Brooklyn’s Pioneer Works, and In This House, performed by cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason with the Philadelphia Orchestra and the BBC Concert Orchestra, in an arrangement by Nico Muhly. Other recent and upcoming performance milestones include North Woods, commissioned by the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation for the Bangor Symphony Orchestra; Life After Death, an orchestral program with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra featuring the world premiere of The Visitor, written for orchestra and soprano Eliza Bagg; Start at the End, a chamber portrait concert and premiere of a new work for Eighth Blackbird; and premieres of new works for pianist Simone Dinnerstein, pianist Lara Downes, and brass quartet The Westerlies with vocalist Vuyo Sotashe. Overseas, the Netherlands' November Music Festival hosted an evening of his chamber works with harpist Lavinia Meijer and the ADAM Quartet; Goran Stevanovich will premiere “A Breathing House,” a new work for concert accordion at Beethovenfest, followed by the release of a subsequent commercial recording on Berlin Classics; and Dutch string quartet ADAM Quartet tours his most recent string quartet “Exquisite Corpse” following their release of a commercial recording of the piece.

 

Ludwig-Leone is a co-founder of Better Company Records alongside San Fermin bandmate Allen Tate. Headquartered out of Better Company Studios in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, the label emphasizes collaborative, multidisciplinary artist support and has overseen more than 200 releases across 50 artists since launching in 2020.

 

  

For further information, please contact Hemsing Associates at 212-772-1132 or visit www.hemsingpr.com.

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