By Coral Gables Gazette staff
Last spring, a 24-year-old pianist named William Yang stood on a stage in Miami and swept the National Chopin Piano Competition — taking not just First Prize but also the Best Mazurka and Best Sonata awards. It was the kind of performance that signals something beyond technical accomplishment. Nine months later, he flew to Warsaw and placed sixth in the International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition — the most prestigious piano competition on earth, held every five years, the one that has launched careers to the world’s great concert halls for generations.
On Sunday, May 3, he comes back to Coral Gables.
The Chopin Foundation of the United States closes its 2025–2026 season of CHOPIN for ALL at Granada Church, 950 University Drive, at 3 p.m. William Yang headlines the season finale in what the Foundation describes, accurately, as a homecoming. The concert is free. Registration is recommended. Seating is general admission on a first-come, first-served basis.
The pianist and what he has done
Yang’s sweep at the 2025 National Chopin Piano Competition in Miami was unusual enough to draw serious critical attention — three major prizes in a single competition is not routine. His Warsaw result was even more significant. The International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition accepts fewer than 90 pianists from thousands of applicants worldwide, and sixth prize in that field places Yang among the most accomplished young Chopin interpreters of his generation by any measure.
Gramophone, the oldest and most authoritative classical music publication in the English-speaking world, described his playing in terms that are worth quoting in full: he “approaches every phrase, every dynamic directive, every expressive indication as an art conservator might restore a painting by an old master, removing decades of accumulated dust and grime.” That is not routine praise. It describes a musician whose relationship to Chopin is not merely technical but archaeological — a performer committed to recovering what the music actually asks for rather than what habit and convention have layered over it.
Yang has performed as soloist with the Warsaw Philharmonic, the Minnesota Orchestra, and the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, and has debuted at both Warsaw Philharmonic Hall and Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall. He holds a recording contract from his National Competition victory, with a debut recording forthcoming in 2026. He is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music and a Kovner Fellow at the Juilliard School, where he studied with Robert McDonald. He continues his work at the Yale School of Music under his longtime mentor, Alexander Korsantia.
The program
Sunday’s program opens with Scriabin’s Preludes, Op. 11 — a selection from the set of 24 that the Russian composer completed in 1896, pieces that sit at the intersection of late Romantic harmonic language and the proto-modernism that would define Scriabin’s later work. Their pairing with Chopin is not accidental: Scriabin’s early style was deeply formed by Chopin, and placing the two composers in sequence reveals both the inheritance and the departure.
The Chopin half of the program is substantial. Before intermission, Yang plays the Sonata No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 35 — the sonata that contains the Funeral March, one of the most recognizable pieces in the piano repertoire and one of the most technically and interpretively demanding to play without resorting to cliché. After intermission, the complete Preludes, Op. 28 — all 24 of them, the full cycle that Chopin composed in Majorca during the winter of 1838 and 1839 while gravely ill, a set that spans two pages and two minutes at its briefest and expands into some of the most concentrated emotional language Chopin ever wrote.
It is a serious program — not a crowd-pleasing survey but a set of choices that says something about how Yang thinks about Chopin and about what a concert is for.
The series and what it represents
CHOPIN for ALL has brought free concerts of world-class piano music to South Florida community venues since its founding as a series by the Chopin Foundation of the United States, which is based in Miami. The Foundation’s broader mission includes the biennial National Chopin Piano Competition — the event that launched Yang’s international profile last year — as well as scholarships, education programs, and the annual concert series that has made serious classical music genuinely accessible to anyone who wants to attend.
Granada Church in Coral Gables, where Sunday’s concert takes place, seats a congregation and a concert audience with equal comfort. Free and accessible parking is available on Bird Road and University Drive. The program is family-friendly with parental supervision. There is no dress code and no ticket to purchase.
For those who cannot attend in person, a livestream is available.
The Chopin Foundation notes that Saturday’s performance has reached registration capacity. Sunday remains open. Register at the Eventbrite link before the seats fill.
