Pianist Kate Liu has garnered international recognition, notably winning Third Prize at the 17th International Fryderyk Chopin Competition in Warsaw, Poland, where she also received the Best Mazurka Prize and the Audience Favorite Prize awarded by the Polish public through Polish National Radio. Since then, Liu has toured internationally, performing at leading venues and collaborating with orchestras around the world.
Liu has been presented in halls including the Seoul Arts Center; Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre; Warsaw National Philharmonic; La Maison Symphonique de Montréal; Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall; Severance Hall in Cleveland; the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.; Shanghai Concert Hall; Osaka Symphony Hall; and the Phillips Collection. Orchestras she has collaborated with include the Warsaw Philharmonic, Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, The Cleveland Orchestra, Daegu Symphony Orchestra and Rochester Philharmonic. She is a regular invitee to the Chopin and His Europe Festival in Warsaw and was a recipient of the Olivier Berggruen Prize at the Gstaad Menuhin Festival.
Born in Singapore, Liu began piano studies at age 4 and moved to the United States at age 8. She holds degrees from the Curtis Institute of Music and The Juilliard School.
Program
Chopin — Polonaise Op. 26 No. 1 in c-sharp minor
Ballade No. 3 in A-Flat Major, Op. 47
Schumann — Arabeske in C Major, Op. 18
Prokofiev — Piano Sonata No. 8 in B-Flat Major, Op. 84
“Three towering voices of the piano repertoire (Frédéric Chopin, Robert Schumann and Sergei Prokofiev) meet in this expansive program, moving between luminous intimacy and monumental scale. Chopin opens with the brooding Polonaise, the shimmering Third Ballade, and the Second Sonata, whose famous funeral march anchors one of Romanticism’s most dramatic works. After intermission, Schumann’s Arabeske offers tender, introspective lyricism, before Prokofiev’s wartime Eighth Sonata carries the Romantic tradition of poetry and drama into the twentieth century, revealing the depth and breadth of the piano’s voice, from whispered confidences to overwhelming force.”