Junyan Chen

Junyan Chen made such an impression at her last Breinton recital that requests to invite her back began the very same evening — and Junyan, who loved playing for us, was soon asking too. Happily, our feelings were mutual.

A prize winner at the Leeds International Piano Competition, she returns with a programme that traces folk tradition through four very different voices. Chick Corea's Children's Songs, with their echoes of Bartók, capture the innocence of folk melody in jazz miniatures; Amy Beach spins Balkan themes into sweeping Romantic variations; Unsuk Chin transforms rhythmic fragments into glittering abstraction; and Brahms closes the evening by turning Hungarian folk colour into symphonic drama.

From simplicity to complexity, from memory to transformation — we cannot wait to hear where she takes us