pi-hsien chen
Pi-hsien Chen was born in Taiwan and came to Cologne when she was nine years old. One year
later, she was admitted in the class of Hans-Otto Schmidt-Neuhaus. At the age of 21, she won the
First prize at the ARD-International-Piano-Competition in Munich, later on the first prizes at the
A.Schönberg-Competition in Rotterdam and at the J.S.Bach-Competition in Washington D.C.
She performed with important orchestras, such as the London Symphony Orchestra, the BBCSymphony
Orchestra, the Concertgebouw-Orchestra, the Zurich-Tonhalle-Orchestra and all
German Radio-Symphony- Orchestras.
Conductors, with whom she has worked, were Bernhard Haitink, Paul Sacher, Sir Colin Davis,
Charles Dutoit, Marek Janowsky, Hans Zender and Peter Eötvös.
She was partner of Hermann Baumann, Alfons Kontarsky, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Wolfgang
Meyer, Augustin Dumay...
Pi-hsien Chen took part in numerous music-festivals: she gave performances in the Schwetzinger
Festspiele, the London Prom's, Huddersfield Festival, the Osaka Festival, the Hong-Kong-Arts-
Festival, the Festival d'Automne Paris, Musica Strasbourg, the Festival Wien Modern, the
Triennale Cologne, in the German Pavillon of the EXPO 2000 in Hannover, the L'Antheron
Piano Festival in France and at the Sao Raimundo Nonato in Piavi, Brasil.
Her increasing interest and engagement for contemporary music grew in the co-operation with
composers as Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Gyorgy Kurtág, John Cage and Elliott
Carter.
Pi-Hsien Chen has recorded numerous CDs : the Goldberg Variations and the Art of Fugue J. S.
Bach, works by Pierre Boulez, Olivier Messiaen, Scarlatti / Cage, Schoenberg, Xiaoyong Chen,
Mozart ....
Since 1983, Pi-hsien Chen was a professor for the piano at the Musikhochschule, Köln and
continues teaching at the Musikhochschule Freiburg since 2004.
Regularly she is giving international master classes like in Boston, US (Walnut Hill) or Helsinki,
Finland (Sibelius Academy).