Barber

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Hsing-ay Hsu Revives Barber's Centennial: Piano Concerto and Piano Sonata
Available on Spotify and all major platforms, December 2, 2026

New York, November 2, 2026 – Pianist Hsing-ay Hsu brings back Barber Centennial, on December 2, 2026, newly remastered for Spotify and all major streaming platforms. The album pairs two of 20th century’s most formidable American piano works: Samuel Barber's Piano Concerto, Op. 38, and Piano Sonata, Op. 26. Originally produced for the composer’s 100th birthday, the recording returns as America turns 250.

Release details
Barber's Centennial: Piano Concerto and Piano Sonata
Recorded with The Russian Philharmonic Orchestra 2001 (Concerto) and 2010 (Sonata). Remastered in 2026 with iZotope RX by Brandon Vaccaro. Cover photo by Stephanie White.
℗ 2026 Nutmeg Press | Distribution: CD Baby | Release date: December 2, 2026

Praise for the Recording
“This recording should be heard by every music lover. Hsing-ay Hsu has presented a wonderful performance encapsulating brilliant technique with sensitive artistry. The Canzone of the Concerto is a masterly example of emotional outreach through the art of music.”
– Joseph W. Polisi, President Emeritus, The Juilliard School

“Everything I could imagine the composer would want from these pieces, Hsing-ay brings to the fore. Rhythmic clarity, power, introspection, humor, jazziness, extraordinary technique, and Barber's unique kind of twentieth-century romanticism are all to be found in her recordings.”
– Maestro Peter Bay, Austin Symphony Orchestra

From Teenage Obsession to Daring Moscow Recording
The story behind this album is as adventurous and layered as the music itself. The project began the summer before high school, when Hsing-ay's parents gave her a video of Mikhail Baryshnikov dancing Configurations, set to Samuel Barber’s Piano Concerto and played by John Browning. A dancer at heart, she memorized the choreography. “The Romantic musical language of Barber touched my teenager’s soul,” she says. 

A few years later, after winning Juilliard’s prestigious Petschek Award and a Paul and Soros Graduate Fellowship to attend Yale, she dreamed up the most ambitious project she could imagine: learning and recording the Barber Concerto. She discussed how to approach the work with Jon Kimura Parker (“Jackie”), whom she had studied with at the Ravinia Festival Steans Institute. He never questioned whether she could pull it off.

To fund the recording, she wrote to every fan she ever had since the age of 10 for small donations. With help from her uncle and mentor, pianist Fei-Ping Hsu, she booked the Russian Philharmonic Orchestra in Moscow. She flew there in the summer of 2001 without a producer and was met with a few surprises during the session–not least that the conductor never received the score. She handed him her own and said, “Let’s start.” 

It was a very entertaining cultural mishmash of a single recording day, with three languages, negotiations on the edit decisions with the orchestra’s administration, and a useful supply of duty-free cigarettes. She returned to the U.S. with her first concerto recording. The recording, coupled with winning first prize in the Ima Hogg Competition with the Houston Symphony, later landed her a live performance of the Barber with the Austin Symphony under Maestro Peter Bay.

Barber’s Piano Sonata followed in 2010. Juilliard piano chair Veda Kaplinsky, who had helped Hsing-ay recover her technique after a serious shoulder injury, had suggested it. “Being a youthful romantic at the time, I would not touch it until the inspiration came,” Hsing-ay recalled. It arrived in Barber’s centennial year, when she organized a Barber Celebration at the University of Colorado–Boulder as director of the Pendulum New Music Concert Series. She adds, “Many thanks to my husband, composer Daniel Kellogg, who first gave me the vision to embrace 20th/21st century contemporary American music as part of my own identity.” 

Why Now
Fusing classical European orchestration, Baroque fugues, avant-garde 12-tone groupings, with American jazz-infused rhythm and emotional immediacy, Barber’s Piano Sonata and Piano Concerto are built on layers of ideas and cultures spanning place and time. His work is defined not only by the country it was composed in, but by an American spirit of bringing disparate elements together to expand his own identity.

Barber’s Piano Sonata was commissioned by Broadway titans Irving Berlin and Richard Rodgers for the League of Composers and championed by the Jewish-Ukrainian-Russian-American pianist Vladimir Horowitz. The Pulitzer Prize winning Piano Concerto was commissioned for the centennial of G. Schirmer, Inc., and premiered at the opening season of Lincoln Center, a landmark achievement in the establishment of American cultural institutions. 

As AI speeds up our lives and our economies and ecosystems grow ever more entangled, Barber’s music reminds us of our human capacity to find new forms of expression and new connections, folding in the past to face an uncertain future.

The re-release of this recording onto online streaming platforms restores public access for a new generation of listeners, whether they are lifelong classical music aficionados or simply curious audiophiles. Using modern audio restoration and enhancement tools like iZotope RX, the remastered sound has been updated to bring out Hsing-ay’s incredibly dynamic and nuanced performance.

About Hsing-ay Hsu
Steinway Artist Hsing-ay Hsu is an international prizewinner, teacher/educator, and creator of Conscious Listening™ programs. She has performed at prestigious venues including Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, and in Europe & Asia. Honors include the Juilliard William Petschek Debut Award, William Kapell International Competition Silver Medal, Ima Hogg National First Prize, Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship, Gilmore Young Artist Award, and the US Presidential Scholar of the Arts. Born in Beijing, Ms. Hsu trained at Juilliard and Yale. Featured on TEDx Yale and a contributor to Psychology Today, she owns Nutmeg Studio NYC and teaches at Juilliard Extension and Yale Alumni College. She previously taught at the University of Colorado. www.hsingayhsu.com/bio

"An explosion of energy..."  The New York Times
"Power, authority, and self-assurance..."  The Washington Post
"Her performance was masterly in its strength and authority and was sustained by exquisite  
  lyricism."  The Baltimore Sun

"Beijing-born, American-trained pianist Hsing-ay Hsu, with extraordinary prowess, breathes life
  into the music."  Fanfare Magazine

Media Contact: Brandon Vaccaro info@mysterycabal.com
Artist Contact: Hsing-ay Hsu hsingayhsu@gmail.com

Preview link in Google Drive (NOT FOR PUBLICATION):

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/16QFTf3GkW2bkpY8_dsqfUd9nkJGBoCO5?usp=sharing