Chu Wanghua (5th September 1941-Present)

He is a composer, pianist and teacher born in Yixing, Jiangsu, China whose father was the scholar and liberal journalist Chu Anping and whose son is the multidisciplinary artist Mark Chu.

He first studied in China and when he was 14 years old his first compositions were performed at the First National Music Week of China. He was a student of piano and composition at Beijing’s Central Conservatory of Music and after he graduated he became a lecturer there.

With several other composers from the Central Philharmonic Society in Beijing he became an arranger of Xian Xinghai’s Yellow River Cantata. The resulting work was Yellow River Piano Concerto which was premiered by the pianist Yin Chengzong who was also one of its arrangers, in 1970. It has since gone on to become nationally and internationally recorded and performed.

He travelled around China to collect traditional folk music and composed numerous piano pieces from 1973. In the 1980s he moved to Australia to take postgraduate studies at the University of Melbourne, earning his Master of Music degree in 1986. The following year he won the Albert Maggs Composition prize and after taking further studies in the USA and Melbourne before being awarded his Doctor of Music degree in 1988.

Also in 1988 he became a represented composer with the Australia Music Centre and has since gone on to compose many works that include piano concertos, symphonies and string quartets along with several others. He was a prize-winner for his Piano Sonatina which was awarded at the 2000 21st Century Chinese Children’s Piano Compositions Competition. His works have been performed by Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and in Hong Kong at the First Contemporary Chinese Composers Festival and he has given several recitals of his own work at Beijing Concert Hall.

As an author he has written Selected Works for Piano.

China Philharmonic Orchestra recordings
Yellow River Piano Concerto (Xian Xinghai/arranged by Yin Chengzong, Liu Zhuang, Chu Wanghua and several others)
DG 477 6229 (CD: Dragon Songs)
China Philharmonic Orchestra
Piano – Lang Lang
Conductor – Long Yu
Flute (Chinese) – Chen Shasha
Lute – Wu Yuxia

Sources:

Chu Wanghua (5th September 1941-Present)

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