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Hilda Huang

@hilda_sounds

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“She has a mind that can multitask and ears that can multi-listen” SF Examiner
Faculty SwAc, CvA | Steinway Artist
Represented by @anniezguo

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Sharing my @fulbrightnl story at the 2026 Netherlands-America Foundation @the_naf_official Transatlantic dinner last Friday was a poetic moment, the evening before the first day of the Sweelinck Academie 2026-27! I spoke alongside fellow NAF Grantees @sjana.hollowayphd @izthewizabelle @maaikedendunnen with some lovely music from fellow @conservatoriumvanamsterdam alum and American pianist @shane.vanneerden . Heartiest congratulations are in order for @karsudonmez who was warded this year’s NAF Adams van Berckel award!!

Coming to the Netherlands in 2023 was the beginning of a special period of growth. In just three years, it’s led to incredible surprises at the @mafestival_brugge competition , a groundbreaking new narrow-key piano project with @muziekinstrumentenfonds , and my new position at the Sweelinck Academy.

I never imagined that my Fulbright year would develop into such a rich new life and community abroad. Coming to the Netherlands has been more than I could have ever imagined. All of the best parts have been everything unexpected, including meeting my incredible mentor here, @davidkuyken . It took me coming here to realize who I could become, both as a person and as an artist. Often at gala dinners I’ve been asked to perform, but this time, having the chance to speak was a special opportunity to share my deep gratitude to the NAF/Fulbright, and a great honor to speak to her royal highness Princess Margriet and Mr. US Ambassador to the Netherlands, Joseph Popolo.

It means a great deal especially to be in a position to give forward to the next generation of Dutch keyboardists. To me, Dutch-American friendship means believing in the importance of exchange and mutual support and investment, with resources and commitment. I feel this way about my students at @cvajongtalent and can’t wait to see if some of my current and future students will ever explore studying and working in the States!

📸 Ingrid de Reuver by @hilda_sounds

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Get yourself a band that’s so light on their feet!! 🐇🐛🐝With @quartetamizia @ebonycakes_

“This is the playing of the future” 🚀

Excerpt from Mozart concerto in C K. 467, III. Allegro vivace assai

wij hebben voetjes, altijd bewegen! Join me with @nieuwephilharmonieutrecht this upcoming Sunday, 16.00 at the Stadskloosterutrecht! Exam feedback is not always the easiest for everyone but this year I got a line I really value. Moving to the Netherlands and studying at the CvA was as much a leap of faith as some of my artistic decisions, which I feel come from the same courage. The outcome has been to find wonderful musicians whose views I feel align with my own, experiencing the luxury of feeling such profound togetherness while playing.

Over the years people have told me so much about my playing - good and bad - that I’ve made the choice always to keep moving forward no matter what people say, one finger after the next. taken in Conservatorium van Amsterdam by @hilda_sounds

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“There is no ‘pianist Hilda’ nor ‘harpsichordist Hilda’ - there is just Hilda.” - Lawrence
(4/4) These days I feel a strong conviction to remove artificial obstruction of the natural and universal process of entropic musical expansion, whether the prejudice of others, ideology, material limitation, or self-doubt. The mission to reach and touch somebody is my primary mover. So many people, including my teachers, my friends, other musicians, have touched me, and I want to respond. Acknowledging and handling that aspect of my history with the harpsichord as a child, and now as an adult, allows me to become more deeply open, focused, and persuasive as a musical communicator. This is how I take the steps to achieve a next maturity as an artist. (Swipe left to keep reading)

Photo by Verera Breuning

Having now sat on several juries and being a teacher myself, I recognize the impossible challenge of having to judge while trying to preserve my integrity as a non-judgmental person. Such a tender interaction deserves good will and support from everyone on the outside of any such interaction and it requires good faith from all parties. I chose to participate in this year’s competition because of my confidence in members of the jury including @beatricemartinclavecin @jeanrondeau.official richardaegarr and @korneelbernolet . I intuited that the opportunity to play for them on this platform would push me to exercise my courage to express as an artist, with the confidence that they would receive me and my musical intentions in good faith, and recognize and understand both the good (and less good) aspects of my delivery, without becoming judgmental people, independent of the fact that their position as juror would require them to judge me in the end to make a competition ranking. (Swipe left to keep reading)

One always hopes as a performer that using your heart on the stage to express as a musician, one is rewarded with understanding, engagement, in the best cases, acceptance. The psychological need to communicate is as necessary as to need to be seen. I observe my faith in musical communication and the dimensions with which it can be articulated have only grown, often desp taken in Concertgebouw Brugge by @hilda_sounds

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Some precious memories from special week of my first time performing at @oudemuziek! Pc: @meral.maas @ruiqi_ren and @gao1170679 by @hilda_sounds

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Just Added: Concert Camper, 1 September

13:45-14:05 Louis Couperin: suite in F
14:20-14:40 Louis Couperin: suite in F

📍Moskeeplein, Utrecht
Festival @oudemuziek Utrecht taken in Utrecht, Netherlands by @hilda_sounds

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Back to school, in a new chapter 👩🏻‍🎓🧍‍♀️🧍‍♀️🧍‍♀️🧍‍♀️🧍‍♂️🧍‍♂️ taken in Conservatorium van Amsterdam by @hilda_sounds

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“In Two Voices” has been a recital theme of mine since 2024, when John Harbison wrote his Missa Brevis for me for “keyboard”: harpsichord, piano and organ. Several movements are written in two-voice canon. This is the first public performance on harpsichord, joined by other pieces in two voices I’ve felt close to of JS Bach. I’m still waiting one of these days for John’s completion of the final fugue from the Art of the Fugue. I am sure it is worth every moment of the wait.

Tickets now available at the Festival Oude Muziek Website. 📍BAK auditorium, Utrecht
⏰6 September, 15:30 taken in Utrecht, Netherlands by @hilda_sounds

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Congratulations to Norfolk alum Hilda Huang (NCMF '18, '19) on being awarded second prize in the 2026 Musica Antiqua (MA) Competition for harpsichord hosted in Bruges, Belgium! Hilda has also earned top prizes at Leipzig, Würzburg and Tureck International Bach Competitions, and you can hear her at the 2019 Festival playing harpsichord on Bach's Brandenburg Concerto no. 6 at the link in our bio. ⁠
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And you can hear the other Brandenburg Concerti with our 2026 piano fellows on harpsichord this Saturday (8/15) as we wrap up our Chamber Music Session! taken in Norfolk Chamber Music Festival / Yale Summer School of Music by @hilda_sounds

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“She has a mind that can multi-task and ears that can multi-listen” -SF Examiner, ca. 2008

(3/4) For me, studying harpsichord-playing is a formative important development in my musical life. It takes acknowledging one’s childhood to grow up, and acknowledging one’s personal history to move into the future. That is what the process of preparing and competing in @mafestival_brugge Bruges means to me: an important process of discernment, resolution, and acceptance of my very earliest instrumental beginnings, some of my first substantial repertoire interests, my major competition experiences in Leipzig, major performance experiences with Bach (and his musical predecessors). Above all, it has been a precious chance to observe all of the support I have received from people in multiple countries that contradicts the loneliness and misunderstanding I have often faced growing up as a musician with an unusual instrumental background. (Next paragraph swipe left)

I was taught in my very first chemistry class in college that empirical reality is infinitely more complicated, more irrational, more unwieldy to represent, than ideals in numbers, shapes, and equations alone, specifically with respect to fluids, first gas laws, then fluid dynamics. A little friction in the structure of a fluid gives the opening for change, a disturbance the miraculous evidence of life: a seed inspires a salt in solution to crystallize, an oyster turns a grain of sand into a pearl. Sound is made by a disturbance, and its transmission is shaped by the properties, including the repulsion and attraction of its particles, of its fluid medium. Sound broadcasts music: just as fluids expand to fill the space they are given, the will of sound is to expand and the will of music is to expand. (Next paragraph swipe left)

Some of my very closest friends in childhood were other musicians with whom I would play chamber music, and our musical bonds were formative sources of joy, connection and a sense of self, both artistic and personal. Struggling and to maintain some of these musical relationships in my personal history as an artist, seeing some of them slip away as a result of the inexorability of my own m by @hilda_sounds

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2 months ago

We’d like to extend our congratulations to former @salonpianoseries2023 performer @hilda_sounds on winning the second prize at the MA International Competition for Harpsichord in Bruges (@mafestival_brugge) last week! MA Bruges is one of the oldest and most prestigious competitions for early music and for harpsichord in the world, and we are so thrilled for her.⠀
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Hilda visited Farley’s House of Pianos in March 2026, where she played a wonderful recital on clavichord, harpsichord, organ, and piano, in addition to a lecture and a masterclass. Bravo, Hilda!⠀
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📸 by Kent Sweitzer⠀ by @hilda_sounds

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“One mind and heart” - David

(2/4) Those who know me know that my musical life has taken many twists and turns. After “quitting” the piano at age 7, I entered the Preparatory Division of the @sfconservmusic San Francisco Conservatory around age 8 as its first harpsichord student, whereafter I started studying the piano again with @John McCarthy around age 9-10.

During that critical developmental period between the ages of 9 and around 13/14, I learned many major works of Bach and Rameau on the harpsichord, including all of Clavier-Übung 2 and 4. The first “public” performance I remember giving on the harpsichord was in SFCM’s room 301 when I was around 12, where I played the Goldberg Variations. In the end, it also prepared me for the Würzburg Bach Competition, where I went on eventually to play the Goldbergs in the finals on modern piano around age 13. Similarly, the French Overture I learned around age 12 on harpsichord, and later performed it on modern piano for both of my masters degrees in piano at the Yale School of Music around age 23. The Italian Concerto I learned first on the harpsichord at around age 10, which I then played in the finals of the Leipzig Bach Competition on modern piano at age 18. I in fact programmed the Presto finale of the Italian Concerto for one of my semi-final proposals in Bruges, though I ultimately did not have the opportunity to play it.

It took me until after the whole episode of Leipzig finally finished and faded around 2016 to recognize that I had, at a young age, in fact already opened the door between my paths on harpsichord and modern piano. There was a protracted moment of difficulty in making progress because I did not understand the artistic implications of having worked on two very different instruments, with their own ways of shaping the most fundamental elements of music: sound and time.

Pictured: with the wonderful musicians of @ilgardellino @j0hu by @hilda_sounds

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(1/4) Home after a splendid week in Bruges for the @mafestival_brugge Harpsichord competition:
First I want to congratulate @irroldan Roldán, whose very accomplished playing I heard two years ago at the Utrecht Early Music Festival now earned her the First Prize, making her only the second woman in the competition’s history to earn the award after @beatricemartinclavecin Béatrice Martin. On top of being proud of being her colleague, I could not be prouder of this fact. As someone with major mentors (I call them satellite moms) who have worked tirelessly for the advancement of women and girls in various fields such as science, medicine, journalism, law and music, I invite you to join me in celebrating Irene’s achievement.

@korneelbernolet , @christophebursens, and @pieterfra organized a very complex event over multiple days with almost ten harpsichords on multiple stages and practice rooms. The jury listened to so many days of harpsichord playing. It was a true privilege to play twice for Béatrice Martin, Jean Rondeau, Richard Egarr, Korneel Bernolet and Mitzi Meyerson. The members of Il Gardelino shared their music with me for a wonderful performance of the Haydn G major concerto in the final round.

There are so many people I have to thank who have contributed to so many different and various parts of my musical life, but I name specific individuals with which I have deeply personal relationships: Corey Jamason, my very first harpsichord teacher. I still remember Corey asking me why I played the courante of the French Overture in a certain way when I was around 12, and I still remember not having a good answer. Peter Sykes provided me with so much heart and an instrument to practice on in New York during my harpsichord studies at Juilliard. I have to thank Lawrence Chiou and Clavecin Society for encouraging me on nearly every part of my journey, including encouraging me to apply for the competition in the first place, assisting with my recording entries, and providing me with performance opportunities to prepare. My manager and producer Annie Guo has been an indefatigable source of forward-orientation and protection. I am blessed with an incredible team of th taken in Bruges, Belgium by @hilda_sounds

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