Alessio Bax and Lucille Chung Duo
Alessio Bax and Lucille Chung Duo
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BIOGRAPHY
The real-life marriage of concert pianists Alessio Bax and Lucille Chung, with their abundant artistic chemistry, passion, and stunning virtuosity, has led to one of the most appealing and impressive piano duos of our time. In the words of the UK magazine Music and Arts, “Theirs is a marriage of wondrous colours and dextrous aplomb, subtly balanced to make a musical performance sound as one.”
Alessio Bax is praised for creating “a ravishing listening experience” with his lyrical playing, insightful interpretations, and dazzling facility. First Prize winner at the Leeds and Hamamatsu international piano competitions, a 2009 Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient, and a winner of Lincoln Center’s Emerging Artist Award, he has appeared as soloist with nearly 200 orchestras, including London Symphony, Royal Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Dallas and Houston Symphonies, NHK Symphony in Japan, St. Petersburg Philharmonic with Yuri Temirkanov, and the City of Birmingham Symphony with Sir Simon Rattle. Bax’s most recent album releases are Forgotten Dances and Debussy & Ravel for Two with Lucille Chung. His celebrated Signum Classics discography also includes Italian Inspirations; Beethoven’s Hammerklavier and Moonlight Sonatas (a Gramophone Editor’s Choice); Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto; Bax & Chung, a duo disc with Lucille Chung; Alessio Bax plays Mozart, recorded with London’s Southbank Sinfonia; Alessio Bax: Scriabin & Mussorgsky (named “Recording of the Month ... and quite possibly ... of the year” by MusicWeb International); Alessio Bax plays Brahms (a Gramophone Critics’ Choice); Bach Transcribed; and Rachmaninov: Preludes & Melodies (an American Record Guide Critics’ Choice). Recorded for Warner Classics, his Baroque Reflections album was also a Gramophone Editor’s Choice. He performed Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata for Daniel Barenboim in the PBS-TV documentary Barenboim on Beethoven: Masterclass, available on DVD from EMI. He also released the collection Lullabies for Mila on Signum Classics, which also features Chung and is dedicated to their daughter, born in 2014.
First Prize winner of the Stravinsky International Piano Competition, Lucille Chung has been celebrated for her “stylish and refined” performances by Gramophone. She was born in Montreal, and made her debut at the age of ten with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, after which Charles Dutoit invited her as soloist on the orchestra’s tour to Asia. She has since performed with orchestras around the world, including the Philadelphia Orchestra, Moscow Virtuosi, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Seoul Philharmonic, Dallas Symphony, and Israel Chamber Orchestra, as well as all the major orchestras in Canada, among them the Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver Symphonies and National Arts Centre Orchestra. She has appeared with conductors such as Krzysztof Penderecki, Vladimir Spivakov, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, and Vasily Petrenko.
Lucille Chung’s discography includes the complete piano works by György Ligeti on the Dynamic label, the second volume of which comprises his works for piano four hands and two pianos, and marks the first recorded collaboration between Bax & Chung. In 2006, the duo released Saint-Saëns’s Carnival of the Animals with Fort Worth Symphony under Miguel Harth-Bedoya, with Michael York as narrator. 2024 saw the release of Debussy and Ravel for Two to great acclaim.
Chung recorded the two Mendelssohn Piano Concerti on the Richelieu/Radio-Canada label, which was nominated for the Prix Opus in Canada. In 2007 she released a solo album for the Fazioli Concert Hall Series. Chung then embarked on an exclusive contract with Disques XXI/Universal: Camille Saint-Saëns Piano Transcriptions and Mozart & Me. In 2015, she released an all-Poulenc album for Signum Records, and in 2018, her 14th album titled Liszt Piano Works was released to great acclaim.
Together, Bax & Chung have performed in major festivals and concert halls around the world; in 2008 alone, they logged 20,000 miles by train as they toured their four-hand Pétrouchka across the far reaches of Stravinsky’s homeland. They have appeared at international festivals including Verbier in Switzerland; Við Djúpið in Iceland; the opening concert of Chungmu Hall in Seoul, Korea; the Pau Casals, Castilla y León, Torroella de Montgrí, and Pamplona International Festivals in Spain; the Felicja Blumental Festival in Tel Aviv; Lübecker Kammermusikfest and Schloss Elmau in Germany; Ottawa International Chamber Festival in Canada; and Music@Menlo, Mainly Mozart, and Bard Music Festival in the U.S.; besides giving performances in Aruba, Barbados, Brazil, China, Cyprus, France, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Italy, Palestine, Russia, and the United Kingdom. In recent seasons they have performed at New York’s Lincoln Center; with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, the Chopin Society in Saint Paul, MN; Dumbarton Oaks series in Washington, DC; at Italy’s Incontri in Terra di Siena Festival, where Bax assumed the role of Artistic Director in 2017; and at Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, playing Mozart’s Concerto for Two Pianos with the Filarmónica de Buenos Aires.
After meeting at the 1997 Hamamatsu Competition, Bax & Chung carried on a courtship by telephone and email while on separate tours, eventually marrying in 2004. They are also co-artistic directors of the Joaquín Achúcarro Foundation in Dallas, Texas, created to cultivate the legacy of the Basque pianist and to support young pianists’ careers.
2025/2026
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