Grammy-Nominated Pianist Han Chen Opens Montgomery County Chorale & Orchestra’s 2026/27 Season, Montgomery, Pa, October 18, 2026

Mr. Chen Will Perform Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.1 & Florence Price’s Piano Concerto.

GRAMMY-nominated pianist Han Chen will make his debut as a soloist with the Montgomery County Chorale & Orchestra on Sunday afternoon, October 18, 2026, 3 pm, at Trinity Lutheran Church (1000 W. Main Street, Lansdale, PA 19446). Entitled Brilliance in Motion: Piano Meets Symphony, this concert is the 2026-27 season-opening event of the Chorale and Orchestra.

Mr. Han will perform Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.1 with the ensemble and Artistic Director and conductor David J. Fitzpatrick. He also plays Florence Price’s Piano Concerto, the piece for which he received his Grammy nomination. The balance of the program includes Schubert’s Overture, and a world premiere piece written specifically for this event by Ajibola Rivers, who is a member of the Montgomery County Orchestra.

The full program follows:

General admission of $25, $5 student tickets, are available on the event page. Tickets are free for children 12 and under; groups of 6 and more receive a $5 discount on each ticket. For more information, please visit pianist Han Chen’s website, and Montgomery County Chorale & Orchestra’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 is represented by Black Tea Music. Mr. Chen is a Steinway Artist.

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

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