Emerging Artist Spotlight | Wenting Shi

As Cedille approaches the semifinal and final rounds of its Emerging Artist Competition on May 17 and 18, 2025, we’re taking this opportunity to introduce you to the very talented artists participating in this year’s event!

Pianist Wenting Shi is a 2023 Luminarts Cultural Foundation Fellow, and also won First Prize at the Thaviu-Isaak Piano Competition (USA), Berlin Artur Schnabel Piano Competition, Hong Kong International Piano Competition, Serge & Olga Koussevitzky Young Artist Awards Piano Competition, and San Jose International Piano Competition. She was also honored with the Georges Cziffra Prize, presented by the Cziffra Stiftung in Austria.

Wenting earned her Bachelor’s, including the Arthur Rubinstein Prize for Academic and Artistic Achievement, and Master’s degrees from The Juilliard School, plus a Master of Musical Arts degree from the Yale School of Music. She graduated with highest distinction (“Auszeichnung”) from the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna and earned the “Konzertexamen” degree from the Berlin University of the Arts, the highest level of performance education in Germany. She also holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Northwestern’s Bienen School of Music.

As an international recitalist, Wenting has performed with leading orchestras including the Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong Symphony Orchestras. She has appeared in renowned venues worldwide, including Alice Tully Hall (New York), Salle Gaveau (Paris), the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium (Brussels), Hong Kong City Hall, and the Musikverein (Vienna).

Learn more about Wenting through the video interview and transcription below.

When did you fall in love with classical music?

I’m the only musician in my family, but my parents are very enthusiastic music lovers and they told me that when I was just a little baby I used to climb on the piano and then play around with the keyboard, so they thought I might have some talent in music. I learned so fast, so the local teacher had to suggest my parents to send me to a professional teacher in Shanghai. It’s a big move for my family because I was not born in Shanghai and they had to move just for me to chase my music dream. I was only seven years old.

Where have you studied and what are your musical influences?

I graduated from Shanghai Conservatory when I was 17 years old. I went to the New York City and I studied at Juilliard for six years. After six years in the New York City, I went to Yale, and after eight years living in the States, I realized probably it’s time for me to explore a totally different musical environment. So I decided to move to Europe and wrote it myself in Vienna and Berlin for four years.

Back then I had to learn German. I also started to really understand how German and Austrian composers compose. It’s such a close relationship between language and music. How they freeze the music, how they put articulation or even small dynamic science in their music. Everything is closely related to the language itself. Since I’ve exposed to a lot of musical cultures, I just realized even though people are quite different in their professions, in their interest, in their habits, they always want to have this experience in arts in general. I think after all, we as human being want to find truth in whatever genre in art. And that’s what I am trying to do.

Tell us about the album you would like to create with Cedille Records.

If I get the chance to work with Cedille on my personal album, I’d like to introduce the idea. Or a journey called Whimsical Voyage. That is a journey where everybody can enjoy a time machine that brings us to different time periods or it’s like a journey where we can go to different countries and experiment in different musical cultures. And it is also a barrage where one can achieve a self-realization, self-exploration for self-satisfaction. And this is what I want to do in this album.