Junyan Chen certainly made a splash at last year’s Leeds International Piano Competition, taking away the silver medal – and, importantly, the chamber music prize. It has led to a return to Leeds, to curate an intriguing and personal series of concerts as part of Leeds International Concert Season. With an adventurous and insatiable approach to new repertoire, including contemporary and classical, Chen is definitely a pianist to keep an eye on.
Born in Shanghai, Chen moved to London aged 18 to study piano with Joanna MacGregor at the Royal Academy of Music. But an adventurous approach to repertoire had been inculcated from well before then, in her time at Shanghai Conservatory. Her teacher, William Chen, “was very inspiring, in the sense of wanting me to have my own identity,” Chen tells me when we speak by video call, “rather than just doing ordinary ‘good playing’! I’ve always tried to put myself outside of what I’m used to doing. To try to find out more ways of exploring as a musician.”
The groups Chen has assembled for the Leeds Chamber Series seem to capture this spirit well. Lodestar Trio, a group blending Nordic folk instruments with Baroque and modern repertoire, kicked off the season earlier this month – including arrangements of Bach and Bartók for nyckelharpa and Hardanger fiddle. “I have played with virtually everybody in this season, and I know they’re all incredibly brilliant musicians,” Chen tells me.
In the series, Chen has adopted an overall theme of Root/Route. For a musician whose career has included a transferral of 6000 miles from one side of the world to the other, one can see the obvious relevance. “I definitely needed to learn the way that people react to music here, on this side of the world.” Appropriately, the wordplay came to Chen while doodling on a napkin, “when I was on a plane to somewhere – I don’t even remember to where.” She expands further: “I have the root in me, but I’m exploring my way out of that.”
In Chen, one can certainly detect traces of Joanna MacGregor’s voracious attitude to musical discovery. And fellow Royal Academy alums are present throughout this Leeds season. In December, young Early music group Londonium Consort arrive to perform a mixed programme of new and old music, described in their words as exploring “exile and migration. Music by John Dowland and William Brade tells of musicians who travelled across Europe in search of work and expression.”
Another young group formed at the Royal Academy is Trio Arisonto, who perform at Leeds in November. A trio of horn, violin and piano, their programme includes several re-arrangements – something common to many of the groups performing this season at Leeds. “All of the musicians have re-written some of the pieces, transcribed them, made the music suit their instruments,” Chen says. “It’s a great, different way for people to experience this music. And it’s not this feeling that I have to steal some other people’s repertoire! It’s more an idea of: okay, how does this sound, what I can do? I find that fascinating.”
In their new re-arrangement of Ravel’s Pavane pour une infante défunte, Trio Arisonto also pick up on another theme running through this series: French music. The Ravel celebrations running throughout this year is one motivation – but Chen’s present immersion in French music runs a little deeper. With a current recital programme encompassing Couperin, Poulenc and Messiaen, she also recently returned to the Royal Academy to perform Boulez’s Sur Incises with Susanna Mälkki – an enormous undertaking for any pianist.
“I had this feeling, when I was younger, that French music was some of the most difficult to do,” Chen says, “because of the impressionism. How you make the piano sound unlike a piano? How do you create some magic dust with this instrument?” French ensemble Temporal Harmonies Inc arrive in January to perform a deep-French programme, including Debussy, Poulenc, Lili Boulanger’s D’un matin de printemps and Ravel’s Piano Trio, with the violin part rearranged for flute. Chen says she was surprised that the flute could be brought into such a classic work for piano and strings – but the recasting was an idea originating with the ensemble. “It’s such a difficult piece. But everything happened quite smoothly, with Lili Boulanger, Ravel, putting this music together. I think it works very well, within this whole series.”
Chen also performs herself in the series in February, with her own chamber group Ensemble Jackalope, a piano quartet. A French thread reappears, with the programme centred on Fauré’s proto-impressionist Piano Quartet no. 1 – juxtaposed with Frank Bridge’s Phantasy (impressionist-adjacent?), as well as Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s Shades of Silence.
The members of Ensemble Jackalope – Charlotte Spruit (violin), Edgar Francis (viola), and Hugh Mackay (cello) – are rapidly establishing young soloists in their own right. “Unlike other professional groups, we haven’t really done too many concerts together,” Chen says. “But every single time we rehearse, it feels like we are friends talking to each other. Of course, we do dig in to each bar and talk about details – but it feels very natural.” The curious question of the name came up. “There is this pub, right next to the Royal Academy, called the Jackalope. Having spent quite a lot of time in there, we decided: this pub can be our headquarters. We named ourselves after that! It’s a mystical creature, like a horse-looking magical weird animal – it suits our personalities, we’re all quite strange somehow.”
Chen is also convening with fellow Leeds Piano Competition winner Alim Beisembayev for a two-piano date, the final concert of the series in March, juxtaposing music of Poulenc and Rachmaninov. For both pianists, the big-handed Russian virtuoso’s music has been a central part of their early careers. But while the grand late-romanticism of Rachmaninov might seem distant from Poulenc’s droll surrealism, Chen sees parallels. “Somehow because of the Rachmaninov connection with America, with jazz-influenced writing, it’s quite obvious why they might work well together,” Chen says. “When we think about Poulenc, there’s this wittiness, fun, excitement – but in the first piece, Elégie for two pianos, it’s sadness. It’s a different side of Poulenc we don’t see so often.”
“And with the two Rachmaninov pieces,” Chen continues, “the Symphonic Dances and later the Suite, one is from when he was 21 years old. By contrast, the Symphonic Dances is his last complete piece. Because of the Root/Route title, I thought it’s perfect for me to connect those two sides of the composer.” Like many pianists, Chen has Rachmaninov on the brain. “I was doing Rachmaninov’s Fourth Piano Concerto with the Philharmonia a few weeks ago, and a few days ago I was doing Rach Three – it’s a lot of Rachmaninov going on right now!”
I ask a little more about the importance of Rachmaninov to her. “When I was starting to learn Rach Three, it’s so rich, so much emotion and sadness, so much deliciousness in his music. But at least for me, when I play, I try to be calm and collected… it’s this feeling of how one could leave the emotion out of it. How can you see the music for itself? To convey who the composer is – who he was. Rather than all this excitement with massive chords and huge colours and virtuosity. There’s this soulfulness, this sadness in his music.”
We reflect on the importance of chamber music for concert pianists – a tribe who can suffer from loneliness, due to long hours in the practice room, or isolation on stage. “It’s out of our comfort zone to go out there, talk with others and play chamber music,” Chen says. “We can survive without other people – it might be controversial but that’s just the fact of this instrument, the piano. But I do feel that when I first started playing chamber music, I learned so much about how to listen… When you’re used to listening to other people, you gain this ability to listen to yourself.”
With the chamber series being at Leeds Conservatoire, Chen offers some reflections for young pianists. “It’s definitely important to do chamber music, because you build up relationships with people – and you have work that comes your way!” We laugh. “It’s brutal, but you do have so many more connections when you play with chamber musicians: you get double the work! When you build up these connections, you have friends that you can trust, play music with. When music is something that, at least in my experience, is the most important thing in your life, having friends involved in that, it makes me even happier. I recommend it!” Amen.
Junyan Chen’s Leeds International Chamber Series runs until March 2026.
See all upcoming Leeds International Concert Season events.
This article was sponsored by Leeds International Concert Season.