Joyce Reunites with Takács Quartet for Dvorák at Lincoln Center (March 19), Highlighting Decade of “Mesmerizing Music Making” Together

On March 19, Joyce Yang – “one of the great chamber players of her generation” (Theater Jones) – joins the Takács Quartet for Dvorák’s A-major Piano Quintet in the Great Performers Series at Lincoln Center. As the New York Times observes, “Alongside her burgeoning career as a soloist and concerto performer, the pianist Joyce Yang has also demonstrated impressive gifts as a chamber musician.” Her close rapport with the Grammy Award-winning quartet dates back a full decade to the 2005 Cliburn Competition, where at just 19 she not only took Silver Medal but also – in her first collaboration with the Takács – won the prize for best chamber music performance.

Just days after her return to New York, Joyce reunites with violinist Augustin Hadelich for a four-state spring tour encompassing San Francisco, where they showcase Schumann’s Sonata No. 1 and André Previn’s Tango, Song and Dance (March 22), and Dallas, where their program concludes with Kurtág’s Tre Pezzi and the Franck Sonata (April 4). All four works will be on an upcoming Avie recording, for which she and Hadelich head into the studio together this June. This follows the trio of albums that Joyce released in quick succession last year: her second solo title for Avie Records, Wild Dreams, on which she plays Schumann, Bartók, Hindemith, Rachmaninoff, and arrangements by Earl Wild; Brahms and Schumann Piano Quintets with the Alexander Quartet; and Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, which was hailed as “a performance that marks her out as an enormous talent” (International Record Review).

To round out her spring line-up, Joyce looks forward to returning to the Van Cliburn Foundation for a solo recital (April 7), and reprising Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini with orchestras in Erie, PA (March 7), Las Vegas (April 26), and Victoria, BC (May 9, 10). Having previously performed a complete Rachmaninoff cycle with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and Edo de Waart, Joyce is justly renowned for her interpretations of the Russian composer’s concertos; this past July, the New York Times praised her “sumptuous, powerful, subtle performance” of his First Concerto with the New York Philharmonic.