Every once in a while, a concertgoer is treated to an evening where all of the hoped-for elements are in place: the playing is first-rate, the performers exude warmth and ease, the audience is engaged, the program is a mix of familiar and unusual — in other words, a concert with Carnegie Hall electricity but summer festival Gemütlichkeit, even if it’s still February. Violinists Paul Huang and Danbi Um and pianist Amy Yang presented just such a concert to the Cleveland Chamber Music Society audience at Disciples Christian Church on February 21.

Paul Huang is truly a special violinist, and last Thursday I once again had the chance to enjoy his artistry[…]Paul has been in the news lately - earlier this month he signed with Naïve Records as an exclusive recording artist[…] Playing with pianist Gilles Vonsattel, Huang achieved that delicate shimmer unique to Prokofiev's first violin sonata[…] Huang and Vonsattel were beautifully aligned when the music was parallel in both parts, and they played together like clockwork when the musical wheels spun in many directions.

Violinist Paul Huang opened his recital with pianist Anne-Marie McDermott with unbelievably controlled playing in Arvo Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel, a characteristic that proved to be a theme of the entire programme. His impressive bow control led to expansive, timeless phrases and it seemed as if the audience held its breath for the entire ten minutes, so pristine and mesmerising.

Violinist Paul Huang has given some striking ensemble performances over recent years on Wolf Trap’s chamber music series. Friday night in the Barns, a large audience had the chance to hear him in a solo recital, accompanied adroitly by pianist Anne-Marie McDermott. The challenging program, carefully selected to highlight connections among pieces, elicited both startling virtuosity and lyrical beauty from both musicians.

Huang has much in common with Jascha Heifetz, who was also known for this concerto and who played with a unique sweetness that contrasted with some dazzling playing as well [...] Huang effectively captured the intensity of this concerto. It was a "dream performance" that really moved those who heard his playing. [...] Yes, Huang ensured that the violin really sang in this music. He is very expressive and conveys moments of joy as well as deep feeling. Little wonder that the audience, prompted by the orchestra, gave Huang a tremendous standing ovation that led to rhythmic applause, the traditional European insistence on an encored.

Watching him tease out those somber melodies and frenetically scale the fingerboard to keep up with Shostakovich's furious note changes was worth the delay. His performance Friday night — the first of two this weekend — kinda felt like a prayer for Ukraine. His extended solo turn where fast-paced urgency melted into near silence with notes that whispered as they left his bow captured the imagination of not only us in the audience but the musicians on stage with him. The violin section and its leader sat mesmerized as he played. 

If there was a word that combined “exhilaration” with “exuberance,” we would surely be using it today to describe the October installments of the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra Masterworks concerts this past Thursday and Friday evenings at the Tennessee Theatre. Tapping that subtle richness was violinist Paul Huang, who last intrigued Knoxville audiences in 2017 with the Beethoven Violin Concerto. Huang played the Bruch with stunning precision and control of intricate bow strokes, but what marked the performance was his amazing range of dynamic contrasts within passages, all intelligently and articulately positioned. This was romantic musical sculpting at a most impressive degree, sculpting that was also being mirrored with solidity by Demirjian and the orchestra.

Violinist Paul Huang and pianist Helen Huang are highly lauded soloists who happen to share a last name that’s common in their native Taiwan. But they aren’t brother and sister, nor are they married. A few times a year they come together as a powerhouse duo and their next appearance, only the second since the pandemic began, is taking place on Saturday evening, Sept. 18, for Tannery Pond Concerts at St. James Church in Chatham. They’ll perform a 90-minute program of sonatas by Mendelssohn, Corigliano and Franck.

The duo’s teamwork seems to come as natural as breathing. Their phrasing and tempo changes were effortless, and their unison passages were always impressive, maintaining great clarity and evenness even at the fastest tempos.

Violinist Paul Huang, a recipient of a 2015 Avery Fisher Career Grant and a 2017 Lincoln Center Award for Emerging Artists, gave a stellar performance in the beautiful auditorium of Washington Irving High School. Mendelssohn’s F major Violin Sonata opened the programme, and Huang immediately demonstrated his amazing bow control and ability to use vibrato to colour sound in varied ways.

Featuring Taiwan-born, U.S.-based violinist Paul Huang and Taiwanese American cellist Felix Fan — for whom the concerto was written — the orchestra supported the interplay between the violin’s sweet musings and the cello’s frenetic machinations in the opening “Drifting Shadow.” The two musicians complemented each other well, with Fan’s butterscotch tone and Huang’s lyrical lines flowing with ease. Their meandering melodies in “A Flowering Sacrifice” were beautiful yet unsettling, thanks in part to the ghostly glissandos in the strings, the sounds of paper crumpling and slowly ripping, a bass drum beating like a heart and water pouring and swirling in bowls. Ling threaded these effects gently beneath the soloists, adding to the movement’s primordial quality. Spirited runs in the orchestra heralded “In Expectation,” which evolved into a whimsical waltz. The musicians dove into “Yearning: A Sweet Torture” with operatic verve. Their runs and riffs propelled the soloists to a peak where violin and cello traded emphatic statements before agreeing on a joyous ending.

When your performance receives vigorous applause and unanimous standing ovations with three callbacks until you play an encore, you can be pretty sure the audience enjoyed it. On Saturday night violinist Paul Huang earned all that for his performance of Antonin Dvorák’s Violin Concerto in A minor with the Long Beach Symphony - but there was more. He consistently played with precision, artistry and control, as well as a many-faceted vibrato and gift for timing.

Mr. Huang’s solo entry, only five measures in, sounded vigorously authoritative without any audible gear-change from the slow opening.[...] Fine though this was, the Allegro giocoso Finale was even more memorable, dancingly airborne from start to finish, but with Mr. Huang’s perfectly focused intonation never compromised despite the speeds. The audience cheered this magnificent performance to the Terrace Theater’s rafters, and after being called back several times Mr. Huang obliged with a richly elaborated encore that had me unsuccessfully scratching my memory, but which my knowledgeable spouse informed me was The Red Violin Caprices.

The opening of 2019 Bravo! Vail Festival was beset by last minute programming changes and inclement weather, however, it was Huang in Mozart’s Fourth Violin Concerto who provided the stand out performance of the evening. Recipient of an 2015 Avery Fisher Career Grant and a 2017 Lincoln Center Award for Emerging Artists, Huang drew an unfailingly attractive, golden and resonant tone from his 1742 ‘Wieniawski’ Guarneri ‘del Gesu’. His more expansive bowing and romantic vibrato, in contrast to the sparseness and delicacy preferred by his orchestral collaborators, served as an effective distinction between solo and chamber palettes, particularly on his lower strings. If the first movement was confident and secure, the second and third transcended technical concerns to produce phrases of uninterrupted lyricism (now changes? What bow changes?) and effortlessly bubbling spiccato. It was only when I joined the festival team on the stage for a champagne toast following the performance that I realized how cold it had been for all the musicians, despite the organizers’ best efforts to provide some warmth, making Huang’s achievement all the more remarkable.

Since their previous joint appearance in concert 108 in the Foundation for Chinese Performing Arts series, esteemed collaborators pianist Helen Huang and violinist Paul Huang (no family relationship) have had five years to accumulate honors studding a deep patina of mastery. Winner of the Young Concert Artist Auditions in 2011, Paul has played with such major institutions as the Mariinsky Orchestra under Gergiev to generally ecstatic reviews. Helen’s bio describes accomplishments in solo and chamber repertoire plus concerto gigs with Berlin and New York phils and the like. Despite these individual credentials under spotlight, Helen and Paul gave plenty of rewarding evidence of their teammate stature last night at Jordan Hall in concert 129 of Cathy Chan’s estimable 30-year-old series.

The way violinist Paul Huang played it and JoAnn Falletta conducted it was as if I’d never heard it before. It’s a group hug, no doubt about it. But this Taiwan-born 20-something has a sound that you are not going to forget.

Even though it’s early in the season, but I think that in June, when we look back and take stock of the year, this weekend's concert will emerge as one of the highlights. And what really put the concert over the top is Taiwan-born violinist Paul Huang playing Samuel Barber's Violin Concerto [...] The orchestra string players, paying him the ultimate compliment, began beating on their stands with their bows. Huang began applauding them and Falletta. Everyone was cheering and celebrating.

The contrast could hardly have been greater with the ensuing work, Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto, which brought the night’s second inspiring debut from soloist Paul Huang.

Paul Huang, a hypersensitive soloist in his late 20s, and Stenz provided the evening’s balm: Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto, an audience favorite that regularly keeps more challenging American concerti (by, say, William Schuman or Roger Sessions) off concert programs. This listener does not recall any performance of the Barber, live or recorded, with greater flexibility and inwardness. The first two movements proved tender in the extreme. The presto finale was tossed off lightly, without mood-shattering angularity or trenchancy.

On April 27, violinist Paul Huang kicked off a very busy stretch with a Kennedy Center recital with pianist Orion Weiss. The program included Dvorak, Prokofiev, Brahms, and Conrad Tao’s new Threads of Contact.

In May, Huang has Camerata Pacifica concerts at the Colburn School, a two-day visit to the Shaker village of Pleasant Hill in Kentucky, with the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society in June, and a recital with Wu Han at the Music@Menlo Festival in July. After the Bridgehampton Festival in July, and Jan Vogler‘s Moritzburg Chamber Music Festival & Academy in August, Huang will make his Lucerne Festival debut with Weiss on September 4.

Amidst it all, on June 3, Huang will play Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy with Lior Shambadal conducting the Berliner Symphoniker.