Maestro Ken Hsieh is in a buoyant mood as he talks about the 24th season-opening concert of the Vancouver Metropolitan Orchestra. As the founder and music director, he is delighted that his orchestra has attracted star concert pianist Avan Yu as the soloist. Yu will be on the Orpheum Theatre stage on Sunday (September 20).
“This will be like our 20th-year reunion since we performed together in 2006 with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra in the subscription concert,” Hsieh tells Pancouver over Zoom.
Yu, a 29-year-old Hong Kong-born and Vancouver-raised virtuoso, is the youngest winner of the Canadian Chopin Competition. Yu also won First Prize and nine special awards at the Sydney International Piano Competition of Australia.
“I’m really excited,” Hsieh says. “He’s coming to play the Ravel G major piano concerto.”
Yu has already made his mark playing music by Maurice Ravel, who was France’s leading composer in the 1920s and 1930s. In fact, Yu has performed Ravel’s complete solo piano works in South Korea and Canada. And acording to Yu’s website, “a recording of this cycle is now underway”.
The Vancouver Metropolitan Orchestra program also includes Frédéric Chopin’s Andante Spianato et Grande Polonaise Brillante, Op. 22. After the intermission, the orchestra will return with Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin, which is dedicated to the memory of a friend who died in the First World War. The final piece will be Spanish composer Manuel de Falla’s El amor Brujo: Ballet Suite, featuring Andalusian flamenco rhythms.
“I just find ballet music to be very intriguing,” Hsieh says.
Yu performs as soloist in several countries
A year after Hsieh’s VSO concert in 2006 with Yu, the pianist moved to Germany to be mentored by Klaus Hellwig at the Berlin University of Arts. Yu later studied with Horacio Gutiérrez at the Manhattan School of Music, where Yu earned his doctorate.
Over his career, Yu has performed as a soloist with the National Arts Centre Orchestra of Canada, Vancouver Symphony, Victoria Symphony, Symphony Nova Scotia, Sydney Symphony, Auckland Philharmonia, Hong Kong Philharmonic, and Dresden Philharmonic.
In a 2016 interview with Canadian Immigrant magazine, Yu cited his family’s move to Canada as one of the keys to his success. Yu was 10 years old at the time.
“In Hong Kong, I spent most of the day at school. The school bus picked me up at 6:30 a.m. every school day so that we would beat the traffic jam. After school, I would spend a few hours doing homework. There was not much time for piano playing,” Yu told the publication. “In Vancouver, by comparison, I had much more time to play the piano, which was crucial to discovering and developing my love for music.”
Yu taught piano at the Berlin University of Arts from 2020 to 2025 and is now an assistant professor of piano at the University of Cincinnati.
The Vancouver Metropolitan Orchestra’s 24th season-opening concert will be held at 2 p.m. on Sunday (September 20) at the Orpheum Theatre. There will be a pre-concert talk at 1:35 p.m. For tickets and more information, visit the Vancouver Metropolitan Orchestra website.
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