Katherine Chi

Katherine Chi, firmly established as one of Canada’s most sought-after pianists, has performed throughout Europe and North America to great acclaim. As noted by the New York Times, “Ms. Chi display[s] a keen musical intelligence and a powerful arsenal of technique.” While hailed for her interpretations of Mozart, she is also acclaimed for performances of major romantic and twentieth century concertos. The Globe and Mail described Chi’s performance as “… the most sensational but, better, the most unfailingly cogent and compelling Prokofiev’s Third I have heard in years.” With her energy, character, and spunk, Chi has been described as a “shining star” (Lake Superior News) known to “bring the house down” (The Chronicle Journal), performing concerto repertoire ranging from Bach to Bartók to Liszt to Schoenberg.

Recent engagement highlights include performances of Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with Symphony Nova Scotia, Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with the Huntsville Symphony Orchestra, Beethoven’s Concerto No. 3 in C Minor with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and Grieg’s Concerto in A Minor with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra; in recitals at the Freer Gallery of Art, with Canada’s Chamber Music Kelowna, Honens International Piano Foundation, Maple Ridge Music Society; and a duo recital with Ingrid Fliter in a return to the Gilmore International Keyboard Festival. An upcoming recording featuring works of Beethoven and Rachmaninoff will be released on the Honens label.

Sought after as a concerto soloist of musical and technical distinction, Katherine Chi is noted for the breadth of her repertoire. When she recreated Stockhausen’s landmark work, Mantra, for two pianos and electronics, the Boston Globe wrote, “When the superb pianists Katherine Chi and Aleksandar Madzar took on the challenge at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on Sunday, it was a welcome opportunity: courtside seats at the creation. Chi and Madzar were ensconced among percussion, microphones, and MIDI controllers … the form unfolding like a venerable suite even as it pushes the modernist envelope.”

Katherine Chi has recently appeared with the Vancouver Symphony, the Library of Congress, and the Gilmore International Keyboard Festival. She has previously performed with the Alabama, Calgary, Colorado, Columbus, Edmonton, Grand Rapids, Kitchener-Waterloo, Nova Scotia, Philadelphia, Quebec, Thunder Bay, Toronto, Vancouver and Victoria symphony orchestras; CBC Radio Orchestra; Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra; I Musici de Montreal; Manitoba Chamber Orchestra; the Neue Philharmonie Westfalen; and Toronto Sinfonia. Her festival appearances include Aldeburgh, Banff, Canada’s Festival of the Sound, Launadière, Domaine Forget, Marlboro, Osnabrück Kammermusik, Germany’s Ruhr, Santander Summer Music, and Festival Vancouver.

Katherine Chi made debut recital at the age of nine and a year later was accepted to the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music. She continued studies at the New England Conservatory in Boston, where she received her master’s degree, a graduate degree, an artist diploma and doctorate. In her studies abroad, she spent two years at the International Piano Foundation in Como, Italy, and at the Hochschule für Musik in Cologne. After becoming a prizewinner at the 1998 Busoni International Piano Competition, Ms. Chi was named a Laureate of the Honens International Piano Competition in 2000, and was the first woman and first Canadian to win this award.

September 7, 2017: Honens Prize Laureate Katherine Chi Lights Up National Music Centre with her Performance
- CBC News

January 30, 2015: Library of Congress Honors Karlheinz Stockhausen with Performance by Katherine Chi
- The Washington Post

2000: Kathrine Chi Becomes the Only Women to Win the Triennial Honens International Paino Competition
- Hones

KATHERINE CHI DELIGHTS AUDIENCE
From the turmoil of the first etude, to the drama and emotional depth of the popular fifth etude, right through to the rhythmic, march-like final piece, Chi provided depth and artistic integrity to each. Her command of the keyboard was extraordinary and it was evident that she connected with the drama of the music.

A well-deserved standing ovation was greeted with numerous bows.
– Crystal Doughty, The Daily Courier

PRO MUSICA SOCIETY CELEBRATES CANADIAN MUSIC
As everyone must know by now, 2017 is Canada’s 150th birthday, and to celebrate this important event, many arts organizations have planned something special. For The Calgary Pro Musica Society the special event was a concert March 3 at the Rozsa Centre of now little-heard Canadian music from nearly a century ago — for Canadian music, the time when only the smallest flickers of national sentiment can be perceived.

The impetus behind this unusual, but much enjoyed, program was violinist Scott St. John, now living again in his home town of London, Ont. Turning the pages of the memoirs of violinist Harry Adaskin, St. John discovered a 1930 program of (then) contemporary Canadian violin music that was performed on BBC Ratio by Adaskin and his wife Frances. The main purpose of the evening was to re-create this signal event: a way to remember and celebrate the way we were, musical speaking, nearly a century ago.

The program, originally printed in a Radio Times of the BBC, prominently features a woodcut-style drawing of a husky Canuck, complete with flannel shirt, baggy trousers, and heavy boots, poling logs across a body of water with mountains in the background. The images of Canada and Canadians seem not to have changed much in a century. The music itself was composed in such tiny villages as Toronto and Montreal, a sharp contrast between image and practical fact. And the music itself, almost entirely of romantic temperament evoked the outdoors only in the setting of some French-Canadian fiddle tunes and folk songs. The program also contained a big romantic piano trio by Edward Manning, a New Brunswick-born composer who mostly worked in New York.

Assisting St. John was Calgary pianist Katherine Chi, a longtime friend of St. John, as well as cellist Rafael Hoekman, previously a member of the Calgary Philharmonic and now first cello with The Edmonton Symphony. All three are well-known performers in Canada and have played together before. Combining fluency in technique and a true commitment to this music, they were convincing advocates for the quality of these early works, bringing to their music making a high level of polish in execution and evident enthusiasm.

It has been some time now since I have heard St. John play as a soloist. As he performed the entire first half, one could not but notice how easily, how graciously, he plays. His sound is never forced or hard, but it nevertheless generous and projected easily throughout the Rozsa Centre. Whether it was the wistful, melancholy-tinged French folksong arrangements by Leo Smith or Hector Gratton, or the more overtly virtuoso Sonata in E minor by Healey Willan, St. John was evidently comfortable on state, a natural performer with a refined and poetic sense of the music. As effective as the difficult parts were, St. John was perhaps even more special in his very soft, lyrical playing, the reflective, tender aspects of the folksong arrangement a true delight.

Chi was a fine collaborative partner in the first half, her accompaniments filled with character and spunk. In the Brahamsian style trio by Manning on the second half, she had the leading part and commanded the proceedings with energetic playing that nevertheless did not overpower the strings. Hoekman, brought in at last minute for an ailing Shauna Rolston, provided the warmly lyrical phrases this music requires, and the three performers played with such a unity of purpose that would never guess that the concert was, in fact, just three friends who happened to be playing together.

The audience, seeing mostly unfamiliar names on the program, was clearly happily surprised to be attending a concert that was not only well performed — this could be expected — but contained music of evident quality and considerable charm. The music of these quiet Canadians who toiled for music in the years between the wars showed remarkable strength — music of our colonial past in its style, perhaps, but providing the shoulders upon which our current compositional more nationally inflected music proudly stands.
– Kenneth Delong, Calgary Herald

CHI BRINGS THE HOUSE DOWN
“Add a superior soloist and the music will move you profoundly. That is what Katherine Chi, conductor Leslie Dala and our TBSO musicians did on Thursday evening…Chi knows this piece inside and out and her attention to both power and delicacy was superb.
– Michael Sobota, The Chronicle Journal

KIRILL GERSTEIN AND KATHERINE CHI COMBINE FOR BLAZING GILMORE FESTIVAL PERFORMANCE
“Chi’s trills, especially, astonished by their focused intensity, akin to a commercial diamond drill. Perfect synchronicity magnified the listening enjoyment.

Katherine Chi proved herself a top-tier pianist.”
– C.J. Gianakaris, Kalamazoo Gazette

Orchestral Repertoire

Bach, C. Ph. E.
Concerto in D minor, H. 427 (W.23)

Bach, J.S.
Concerto No. 5 in F minor, BWV 1056
Concerto for two pianos in C major, BWV 1061
Concerto in A minor for four pianos, BWV 1065

Béla Bartók
Concerto No. 1, Sz. 83, BB 91
Concerto No. 3 in E major, Sz. 119, BB 127

Ludwig van Beethoven
Concerto No. 1 in C major, Op. 15
Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major, Op.19
Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37

Concerto No. 4 in G major, Op. 58

Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major Op. 73 "Emperor"

Johannes Brahms
Concerto No. 1 in D minor, Op. 15
Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major, Op. 83

Doreen Carwithen
Concerto for Piano and String Orchestra

Frédéric François Chopin
Andante Spianato and Grande Polonaise Brillante, Op. 22
Concerto No.1 in E minor, Op.11
Concert No. 2 in F minor, Op. 21
Variations sur „Là ci darem la mano ” de „Don Juan” de Mozart in B-flat major, Op. 2

Edvard Grieg
Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16

Franz Liszt
Concerto No. 1 in E-flat major, S124
Concerto No. 2 in A major, S125
Malediction, S121

Nikolai Medtner
Concerto No. 1 in F minor, Op. 33
Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 50
Concerto No. 3 in E minor, Op. 60

Felix Mendelssohn
Capriccio Brillant, Op. 22
Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 25

Olivier Messiaen
Des canyons aux étoiles...

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Concerto No. 10 for two pianos in E-flat major, K. 365
Concerto No. 12 in A major, K. 414
Concerto No. 17 in G major, K. 453
Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K. 466
Concerto No. 21 in C major, K. 467
Concerto No. 22 in E-flat major, K. 482
Concerto No. 23 in A major, K. 488
Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K. 491
Concerto No. 27 in B-flat major, K. 595

Jean Papineau-Couture
Pièce concertante No. 1

Sergei Prokofieff
Concerto No. 1 in D-flat, Op. 10
Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 16
Concerto No. 3 in C major, Op. 26
Concerto No. 4 in B-flat major for left hand, Op. 53

Sergei Rachmaninoff
Concerto No. 1 in F-sharp minor, Op. 1
Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18
Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30
Concerto No. 4 in G minor, Op. 40

Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini in A minor, Op. 43

Camille Saint-Saëns
Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor Op. 22

Robert Schumann
Concerto in A minor, Op. 54
Koncertstück in G major, Op. 92

Peter Illyich Tchaikowsky
Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor, Op. 23 (1874-75)

Joaquin Turina
Rapsodia Sinfónica, Op. 66

*Updated September 2020