Vivianne Cheng is a Steinway Artist who has performed extensively in Europe and the United States. She was born in North Carolina, where she gave her first concert at the age of six. Since then, she has performed in some of the world’s most prestigious venues, such as Carnegie Hall (New York), the Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), the Musikverein (Vienna), the Salle Cortot (Paris), Lincoln Center (U.S.), the Ljubljana Festival (Slovenia), and the Verbier Festival (Switzerland). Recent highlights have included solo recitals in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Austria, Spain, and the U.S., as well as a radio broadcast on NPO Klassiek, a live-recorded recital for 24classics, and a performance of Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto with members of the Concertgebouw Orchestra on Podium Klassiek.
As a laureate of numerous international piano competitions, Vivianne has won prizes at the Tureck International Bach Competition, the New York International Piano Competition, the Concurso Internacional de Piano CLaMo, the Bartók-Kabalevsky-Prokofiev International Piano Competition, the Wideman International Piano Competition, the Concours International de Piano de Lagny, the Philadelphia Orchestra’s Albert M. Greenfield Concerto Competition, and the inaugural Arts Arena–Curtis Institute of Music Award. Vivianne has also received a number of prestigious scholarships, including the highly coveted Vladimir Horowitz Piano Scholarship, the AHK Talent Grant, the Jacques Vonk Fund, the David H. Springman Memorial Fellowship, and the Frank Huntington Beebe Fund Grant.
Her performances have been broadcast on television and radio by PBS, The Classical Network (WWFM), Good Morning Television New Zealand, and in the critically acclaimed documentaries “On a Personal Note” (2010) and “Die Martins-Passion” (2004). As a chamber musician, Vivianne has performed with Ani Kavafian, Ida Kavafian, Michael Gieler, and Efe Baltacigil, and has studied with, among others, Frans Helmerson, Gary Hoffman, Pamela Frank, Gábor Takács-Nagy, Aaron Rosand, and Thomas Riebl. She has also premiered several new compositions for solo piano and various ensembles and has performed works by leading composers such as William Bolcom and Ned Rorem.
Vivianne studied at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam with Naum Grubert (Master’s in Piano, graduating with a 10), the Mozarteum in Salzburg with Andreas Groethuysen and Pavel Gililov (Postgraduate and Master’s in Piano “Solistenausbildung” with the highest honors), and the Curtis Institute of Music with Gary Graffman and Leon Fleisher. Prior to attending the Curtis Institute, Vivianne studied at The Juilliard School, where she was accepted at the age of ten. Her previous teachers included Ruth Slenczynska, Yoheved Kaplinsky, Nina Lelchuk, and Arkady Aronov. Vivianne took masterclasses with legendary pianists such as Alicia de Larrocha, György Sándor, Claude Frank, Earl Wild, Dmitri Bashkirov, Boris Berman, Richard Goode, Menahem Pressler, Ferenc Rados, and Arie Vardi.
Vivianne currently lives in Amsterdam, where she plays a Steinway grand piano provided by the Muziekinstrumentenfonds. In 2020, she received a “Heldenspeld” award from the City of Amsterdam for conceiving and presenting a series of live concerts that took place during the pandemic on a boat sailing through the Amsterdam canals. In addition to her concert activities, Vivianne serves as a piano professor at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria, and the Utrecht Conservatory in the Netherlands.
