on 10 September 2025

We experienced an incredible evening which I can safely say will not be easily repeated. One whole evening dedicated entirely to one composer, yet what sheer variety of styles and unlimited wealth of sounds and harmonies. This all-Chopin programme, performed by the truly gifted young pianist Ryan Wang, felt like a long, joyful journey through some of the most gorgeous works created by the genius of Chopin. It was not a cluster of pieces put together for a concert – it felt much warmer and personal, as if Ryan was exploring them with the audience, guiding us hand-in-hand. What an immense pleasure we received from this experience.

The first half comprised of an amazing combination of nocturne, etude, waltz, ballad and variations, for which Ryan depicted abundant beauty and many faces: The nocturne was sweetly dreamy with the angelic bell-like trills; the Winter Wind etude’s relentless right-hand figuration was powerful yet so clear that every note was appreciated; the Valse Brilliante was sparkly and twirly, its jolly dancing-floor mood vividly created; the Ballad in F minor was deeply story-telling, with impressive dark, weighty tones; and the youthful, operatic Variations La ci darem la mano’was a pure joy – each with different facets like acrobatic brilliance, leaps and cross-hands and bravura display, but never forgetting the true voice of the original theme.

The second half, 24 Preludes Op. 28, was like a journey on its own. Our concert programme note describes them as one of Chopin’s most radical creations: a sequence of shifting states of mind, which contains lyricism, brilliance, melancholy, turbulence, serenity and despair. While there were plenty of full-blown powerful passages, what stood out was absolute calmness expressed with beautiful pianissimo. These moments were priceless. Ryan has an immense focus, ability to stay cool, never loses his own pace, never over-articulates or tries to be intentionally unique, or self-promotes himself as the pianist. Instead, he has this amazing magnetic nature and ability to keep the audience glued. No one flinched during the 40-minute duration of the 24 Preludes.

Ryan became prominent when he won the title of BBC Young Musician of the Year 2024. Now he is taking his challenge higher to the Chopin Competition in Warsaw in October. We wish him all the best for his success, not only for the competition but his future career as an international pianist, which is looking very bright.

Ryan Wang, 17, from Vancouver, Canada, started playing piano at the age of four, and performed his first solo recital at the age of six. In 2013, he began his musical studies under the tutelage of Professor Lee Kum Sing and Dr. Sunsung Kong. He is currently studying on a music scholarship with Mr. Gareth Owen at Eton College in the UK. He earned his Artist Diploma under Professor Marian Rybicki at the ÉcoleNormale de Musique de Paris in France in May 2024, and is the youngest ever to win the Prix Cortot. In September 2024, Ryan was acclaimed the BBC Young Musician of the Year.

Ryan maintains a busy concert career as a soloist and an orchestral performer across the globe, especially in Europe, Asia, and North America. He has performed in prestigious venues such as Carnegie Hall, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Salle Cortot, on the Ellen DeGeneres Show, Fazioli Concert Hall, Windsor Castle, RTHK Radio 4 (HongKong), CCTV 4 (China), CBC Music (Canada), live on FM96.3 (Toronto’s Radio Station at Zoomer Hall), Radio Classique (France), and BBC 2, 3, and 4 (UK). He was invited to perform as a member of the cultural component of Canada’s participation in the APEC Summit in Beijing, 2014. Ryan was also invited to give a private recital at the home of Canadian Prime Minister Steven Harper. His orchestral appearances include the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Toronto Festival Orchestra, Xiamen Philharmonic Orchestra, Vancouver Metropolitan Orchestra, West Coast Symphony Orchestra, Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales and many more.

Among his awards are wins in the 2022 International Piano Competition ‘SAMSON FRANCOIS’, 2023 Jeune Chopin International Piano Competition in Switzerland, 2023 Cleveland International Piano Competition for Young Artists (senior group), 18th Animato International Piano Competition in Paris Frederic Chopin edition in 2023, and 2024 Prix du Piano Bern. In March 2023, aged 15, Ryan was the youngest musician to be included on the British radio station Classic FM’s list of “Rising Stars: 30 Sensational Musicians” all under the age of 30. Ryan was also included in the New Generation Piano series 2022-2023 with 3 other pianists (Bruce Liu, Alim Beisembayev, and Yunchan Lim) by the Fondation Louis Vuitton, and he was invited to perform a solo recital at the Fondation’s concert hall in Paris in 2023.

Nocturne in B major, Op. 62 No. 1

Composed in 1846, the B major Nocturne is one of Chopin’s last works in the genre that he, more than anyone else, defined. By this time, his music had moved far from the salon charm of his early nocturnes and into a realm of heightened sophistication and subtle complexity. This piece unfolds with a gentle, song-like melody, a long line woven over a delicately ornamented accompaniment. Chopin’s writing here evokes a sense of quiet reflection, tinged with bittersweet melancholy. The central section intensifies with harmonic richness and surging expression before the opening theme returns, decorated even more freely — a reminder of Chopin’s gift for turning repetition into revelation. For listeners, this nocturne is a study in refinement: the calm poise of its surface conceals an extraordinary emotional depth.

Étude in A minor, Op. 25 No. 11 (“Winter Wind”)

Few works demonstrate Chopin’s marriage of technical brilliance and dramatic power better than the Étude in A minor, composed around 1836. Nicknamed the “Winter Wind” for its stormy torrents of rapid semiquavers, the piece has become one of the most daunting challenges in the pianist’s repertoire. Yet Chopin’s études were never written as mechanical exercises; each is a poetic miniature in its own right. Here, the relentless right-hand figuration evokes gusting winds and swirling snow, while the left hand carries a broad, noble theme. What makes the piece so compelling is the tension between these two forces — turbulence and strength, chaos and control. To the audience, the piece can feel like a battle: the human spirit asserting itself against an unforgiving storm.

Waltz in A-flat major, Op. 34 No. 1 (“Valse brillante”)

Written in 1835, the Waltz in A-flat major is the first of the three “brilliant” waltzes published as Op. 34. Unlike Chopin’s intimate nocturnes and preludes, these waltzes were conceived with the public concert hall in mind, brimming with sparkle and virtuosity.
This particular waltz begins with an elegant flourish before launching into a buoyant main theme that seems to whirl endlessly around the dance floor. The music is full of contrasts: exuberant passages of rhythmic drive alternate with more lyrical, almost improvisatory episodes. Chopin takes the graceful form of the Viennese waltz and transforms it into something uniquely his own, less about ballroom dancing, more about dazzling pianistic display. Listeners can imagine both the glitter of high society and the personal wit and charm Chopin brought to his playing.

Ballade in F minor, Op. 52

The four ballades stand at the summit of Chopin’s output, and the final one in F minor, composed in 1842, is often regarded as his greatest achievement. Unlike the lighter works of the salon, the ballades are large-scale, deeply dramatic compositions, weaving narrative and emotion into free-flowing musical form. The F minor Ballade opens with a brooding, almost improvisatory introduction, setting the stage for a tale of passion and struggle. Its principal themes are strikingly contrasted: a lyrical, yearning melody against more turbulent, rhythmically driven material. As the piece unfolds, these themes undergo a process of development and transformation, creating a sense of story without words. The climax arrives in a towering coda, where the music surges forward with irresistible momentum before crashing to a tragic close. For audiences, the Ballade can feel like a journey from intimacy to epic tragedy, one of Chopin’s most profound artistic statements.

Variations in B-flat major on “Là ci darem la mano”, Op. 2 

This early work, written in 1827 when Chopin was still a teenager, is based on a duet from Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni. The aria, sung by Don Giovanni and Zerlina, is a playful seduction scene — “Give me your hand” — and Chopin treats it with both reverence and youthful exuberance. After a graceful introduction, the piano presents Mozart’s theme with simplicity before launching into a dazzling sequence of variations. Each explores a different facet of pianistic brilliance: delicate filigree, sparkling scales, exuberant leaps, and bravura display. Remarkably, even at this young age, Chopin shows a sure sense of dramatic pacing, saving the most virtuosic flourishes for the later variations and concluding with a triumphant polonaise-style finale. Robert Schumann, upon hearing the work, famously declared: “Hats off, gentlemen; a genius!” These variations may not yet show the depth of Chopin’s later masterpieces, but they reveal his prodigious gifts and hint at the path his genius would follow.

Preludes, Op. 28

Chopin’s Preludes are a cycle of twenty-four short pieces in all the major and minor keys. Unlike J S Bach’s two sets of Preludes and Fugues (The Well-Tempered Clavier), which progress chromatically upwards through the keys (C major, C minor, C sharp major, C sharp minor, D major, etc), Chopin follows a harmonic sequence of major and relative minor, with each successive pair of preludes moving up a fifth (see above: a 25th prelude would have brought the cycle back to C major).

In Bach’s time a prelude usually preceded something else, whether a fugue (as in his many organ works and the two books of the Well-Tempered Clavier) or dance movements in a suite, although Bach himself also composed short independent preludes for the keyboard.

By the early nineteenth century it was common practice for pianists to improvise briefly as a prelude to their performances, and this tradition gave rise to several sets of Preludes encompassing all the major and minor keys, including examples from Hummel (1814), and Moscheles (1827).

Most of these antecedents are little more than technical exercises. As he had done with the piano study (of which Clementi and Czerny, for example, were noted exponents), Chopin took an existing genre and raised it to a new level, transforming the solo piano prelude into a miniature tone poem capable of expressing a host of different moods and feelings. His Preludes provided a model for later sets of preludes by (among others) Heller, Alkan, Cui, Busoni and Rachmaninov, all embracing the full range of twenty-four keys. Perhaps what distinguishes Chopin’s set from the others is their astonishing conciseness and emotional diversity. Seven of the Preludes last less than a minute; only three last longer than three minutes.

Robert Schumann described the Preludes as:

. . .sketches, the beginning of studies, or (if you prefer) ruins, a few eagles’ wings, all brightly coloured and scattered about. But the message Chopin wrote springs out of every one of these exquisitely written pieces; one recognises him breathing heavily in the pauses.

He is, and remains, the boldest and proudest poetic spirit of our age. The collection even contains some sickly, feverish, repulsive elements: let every man therefore seek in it what avails him; let only the philistine stay away.

Although it has been claimed that some of Chopin’s Preludes show the influence of Bach, in fact the association is pretty tenuous. The Preludes have much more in common with the two sets of Études (1833 and 1837) and with the overtly romantic music of the Waltzes, Mazurkas and Nocturnes. However, Chopin did take with him his copy of the Well-Tempered Clavier on the ill-fated trip with George Sand to Majorca in 1838. It was here that he put the finishing touches to the cycle that had been occupying him on and off from 1836. The final Prelude was completed on 22 January 1839.

Many have been tempted to apply descriptive titles to the Preludes – the celebrated conductor-pianist Hans von Bülow (1830–94) gave a title to each one, as did George Sand (according to one of her daughters) – although Chopin himself would not have approved of any of them: he did not conceive the music as programmatic.

The nickname that has become best-known is that of No 15 in D flat major – the Raindrop, attributed to Sand but denied by Chopin. The constantly repeated quavers (mostly on A flat/G sharp) are supposed to depict the steady dripping of the rain on the roof of the monastery of Valldemossa, Majorca, where Chopin, Sand and her four children found uncomfortable lodgings.

Composers and arrangers have made use of the Preludes in other contexts, notably Nos 4 in E minor and 6 in B minor, which were played on the organ at Chopin’s funeral; No 20 in C minor, which inspired two sets of variations by Busoni and one from Rachmaninov; and No 7 in A major, which became one of the dances in Les Sylphides.

Taken individually, the Preludes can seem like fragments, each a glimpse into a particular mood or idea. But heard as a complete set, they form one of Chopin’s most radical creations: a sequence of shifting states of mind, almost like a diary written in music. They contain lyricism, brilliance, melancholy, turbulence, serenity, and despair, all within the span of 40 minutes. For audiences, the experience is one of immersion in Chopin’s world: fleeting, mercurial, yet profoundly human.