The Swan - music for cello and orchestra

Seventeen-year-old cellist Han-Na Chang has won international recognition for her exceptional musical gifts. In October 1994, wishing to play before the great cellist, she entered the Fifth Rostropovich International Cello Competition in Paris. She left the Competition with the First Prize as well as the Contemporary Music Prize, unanimously chosen for both awards by Maestro Rostropovich and ten other jury members.
Han-Na Chang is about to embark on a tour of Japan scheduled for late October 2000 including dates in Nagoya and Tokyo with Lorin Maazel and the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra. In December 2000 she has concerts in Budapest, Gyor and Debrecen in Hungary with the Orchestre Nationale de Lyon performing Saint-Saëns Concerto No.1. Other highlights of the 2000-2001 season will include concerts in Cincinnati and New York with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in early January with whom she will tour Europe at the end of January and February 2001 with dates in Spain, Germany and Poland. A further tour to America is planned for April 2001.

In the 1999-2000 season, Han-Na performed subscription debuts with the Berlin Philharmonic and the Orchestre de Paris under Lorin Maazel, the Monte Carlo Philharmonic under Maestro Sinopoli and the San Francisco Symphony under Herbert Blomstedt. She will also make return engagements with the Bayerischer Rundfunk Orchestra in Munich led by Maestro Maazel and Rome's Santa Cecilia Orchestra under Myung-Whun Chung. In the summer of 2000 Han-Na made her debut in Australia, including concerts with the Sydney Symphony led by Leonard Slatkin as part of the cultural celebrations during the Olympic Games.

Highlights of Miss Chang's 1997-98 and 1998-99 seasons included her New York Philharmonic debut in subscription concerts with Charles Dutoit, as well as appearances with Mariss Jansons and the Pittsburgh Symphony, Jesus Lopez-Cobos and the Cincinnati Symphony, the Montreal Symphony and the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C. Internationally, she performed with the Bayerischer Rundfunk Orchestra, Tokyo's NHK Symphony, Rome's Santa Cecilia Orchestra, the Helsinki Philharmonic, the Orchestre National de France and the Hong Kong Philharmonic. In addition to a rectial tour of Japan, she also toured Japan with Giuseppe Sinopoli and the Dresden Staatskapelle and gave a concert in Seoul with Zubin Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic.

Han-Na Chang made her formal debut in March 1995 in her native Seoul with Giuseppe Sinopoli conducting the Dresden Staatskapelle, establishing what has already become a close collaboration. She has gone on to work with many other distinguished conductors and orchestras, including Mstislav Rostropovich and the London Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Symphony Orchestra (for its 1996-97 season opening gala concert with Isaac Stern), Charles Dutoit and the Philadelphia Orchestra, Leonard Slatkin and the Cleveland Orchestra (at the Blossom Festival), Eiji Oue and the Minnesota Orchestra, Riccardo Muti and the La Scala Orchestra and Yuri Temirkanov and the Young Israel Philharmonic (at the Verbier Festival in Switzerland).

In 1996 she made her Carnegie Hall debut with Charles Dutoit and the Montreal Symphony. She also had the exceptional opportunity to play chamber music with such artists as Mischa Maisky, Gidon Kremer and Dmitry Sitkovetsky at the Verbier and Lockenhaus (Kremerata Musica) Festivals.

In November 1995, she made her first recording for EMI Classics with Maestro Rostropovich and the London Symphony Orchestra, featuring Tchaikovsky's "Rococo" Variations, Saint-Saëns' Cello Concerto No. 1, Fauré's "Elegie" and Bruch's "Kol Nidrei." Her second recording, released in 1998, is of the two Haydn Cello Concertos with Giuseppe Sinopoli conducting the Dresden Staatskapelle. In March 2000 she recorded a third album of short works for Cello with Leonard Slatkin and the Philharmonia Orchestra, which was released in October 2000. The recording, The Swan, includes pieces by Bruch, Rachmaninov, Fauré and Panufnik.

Miss Chang has appeared in several televised concert broadcasts, including the 1998 Easter Day concert from Munich with Lorin Maazel and the Bayerischer Rundfunk Orchestra and the Kennedy Center's 25th anniversary gala (performing with Leonard Slatkin and the International Chamber Orchestra). She also was featured at the 1997 "Victoire de la Musique" awards, televised throughout Europe, and has been profiled by "CBS Sunday Morning" and CNN, among other networks worldwide. In 1997 she was honoured with the Young Artist of the Year prize at the ECHO Classical Music Awards in Germany.

Han-Na Chang began her musical studies at the age of 3 on the piano and switched to the cello three years later. She participated on a full scholarship in the master classes of Mischa Maisky in Siena, Italy, and has studied privately with both Maestro Maisky and Maestro Rostropovich. In September 1999, she entered the eleventh grade at the Rockland Country Day School in Congers, New York.