News
Review
Huang duo’s fantastic collaboration opens Kent Blossom season
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.
Stephanie ManningClevelandClassical.com
18 July 2021
Review
Huang Duo perform on People's Symphony Concerts series in New York.
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.
Leah HollingsworthThe Strad Magazine
27 March 2020
Review
Taipei Symphony makes Strathmore Debut with Pride and Passion
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.
Grace JeanWashington Post
16 November 2019
Review
Violinist Paul Huang Brings del Gesù Violin to Life
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.
Laurie NilesViolinist.com
03 October 2019
Review
Ligeti, Dvořák, and Tchaikovsky open LBSO's 85th Season
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.
David BrownLA Opus
01 October 2019
Review
Silver Linings- Postcard from Vail
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.
Charlotte SmithThe Strad
26 August 2019
Review
Huang Teamwork in the Highest
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.
Lee EisemanBoston Musical Intelligencer
27 January 2019
Review
Crystal clear sounds at stunning BPO “Twentieth Century Classics” concert
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.
Peter HallBuffalo Rising
13 October 2018
Review
Historic Violin, Intense Virtuoso add Fire to BPO Concert.
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.
Mary Kunz GoldmanThe Buffalo News
12 October 2018
Review
Conductor Stenz makes auspicious Grant Park debut on a rainy night Sat Jul 21,
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.
Lawrence JohnsonChicago Classical Review
21 July 2018
Review
Markus Stenz puts a firm mark on Grant Park Music Festival
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.
Alan ArtnerChicago Tribune
21 July 2018
Feature
Paul Huang To Perform Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy with the Berliner Symphoniker
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.
Laurence VittesStrings Magazine
02 May 2018
Review
Paul Huang Nurtures the New Amid the Canon
Amid the plethora of performers and ensembles today focused on contemporary music, more traditionally minded concert musicians, as well, are trying to find a better balance between old and new. One is Paul Huang, a violinist whose wide-ranging and consistently compelling recital for Washington Performing Arts at the Terrace Theater on Friday night included a world premiere by Conrad Tao.
Anne MidgetteThe Washington Post
29 April 2018
Feature
Playing the 'Wieniawski' del Gesù and Returning to Kennedy Center
Every day I feel like I learn something new from this violin," said violinist Paul Huang, who has been playing the instrument since it was loaned to him in 2012 by the Stradivari Society of Chicago. Huang, 27, will play the instrument on Friday in a recital at the Kennedy Center's Terrace Theater in Washington, D.C. with pianist Orion Weiss and pianist/composer Conrad Tao.
Laurie NilesViolinist.com
24 April 2018
Feature
Musician Paul Huang: “ Finding a voice in the violin was a revelation”
Paul Huang is so busy performing as a guest violinist with orchestras and in chamber ensembles around the world that he spends little time in his New York apartment. But when he does, he enjoys entertaining.
Beth WoodSan Diego Union-Tribune
22 February 2018
Review
Violin and Piano Virtuosi in the Mooredale Series
When I read in the pre-concert publicity that Paul Huang has been called the next Joshua Bell, I was surprised, but when he played Prokofiev’s first sonata, with its broad and varied expressive range and its considerable technical demands on the player, I understood why.
Paul MerkleyToronto Concert Reviews
19 February 2018
Review
Poetry, Death, and Beauty at KSO Concert
No one will think of guest soloist Paul Huang, who performed with the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra at the Tennessee Theatre Thursday night as just another showman with a great violin. Huang did nothing, except play Beethoven’s 1806 Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D Major, Op. 61 gorgeously. Huang, 27, is much more a statesman of the concert stage than a showoff. He also plays with a sense of poetry few people possess at that age.
Harold DuckettKnoxTNToday
17 November 2017
Review
Violinist Stars in Chamber Concert
Violinist Paul Huang, joined by fine faculty pianist Dmitri Shteinberg, delivered a powerful and sublime performance of César Franck’s 1886 Sonata in A Major. While Shteinberg’s performance was expert but a bit reserved, Huang played with a depth seldom heard in contemporary violinists, let alone one who is 27 years old.
Jim LoweThe Times Argus
07 July 2017
Review
Omaha Symphony showcases the work of three musical prodigies
During the Mozart, in his Omaha debut, 27-year-old Taiwanese-American violinist Paul Huang was triumphant. The audience was in awe as Huang explored each melody and cadenza on his instrument.
Drew NenemanOmaha World-Herald
08 April 2017
Review
Paul Huang Debuts with Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra
With a stoic demeanor, Huang quickly proved himself one of today’s finest young violinists; within minutes of taking the stage, he secured himself a spot beside virtuosos Itzhak Perlman and Joshua Bell.