Cheng-Zong Yin was born in 1941 on the island of Gulangyu in Xiamen, Fujian Province, in the People's Republic of China. A child prodigy who gave his first recital at age nine, Yin was trained at Shanghai Conservatory, the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, and the Leningrad Conservatory. He received international acclaim as the second-prize winner of the International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1962 (Vladimir Askkenazy took first prize that year), and since that time has garnered numerous honors and awards.
In May of 1967 Yin risked his life by defiantly performing an upright piano for three days in the middle of Beijing's Tiananmen Square just a year after the Red Guard had confiscated and destroyed every piano it could find. According to author Daniel Powers, "By the clever act of hauling his piano into the fields and playing revolutionary songs for the masses, Yin established the 'bourgeois' piano as an instrument acceptable within the musical pantheon of the Cultural Revolution." This strategem redeemed the piano in the eyes of militant young supporters of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution (1966-76), who otherwise sought to eradicate every vestige of Western influence even as they attacked China's own great cultural heritage. With Mao's death in 1976, however, the radical policies of the Cultural Revolution ended, and China has since that time produced some of the world's most significant new composers and performers of tonal music.
Yin's career has been an inspiration both to his countrymen and to artists across the globe. He has performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra, and many other internationally distinguished musical ensembles. He has appeared as a recitalist at Carnegie Hall four times (1983, 1991, 1993 and 1996), and recently served as artist-in-residence at the Cleveland Institute of Music.
Yin's repertoire includes not only the great masterpieces of Western music but also many of his own compositions, which are richly steeped in Chinese tradition. He is best known for his award-winning contribution to the Yellow River Concerto, a highly successful arrangement by several composers of material from Xian Xinghai's Yellow River Cantata.
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Cheng-Zong Yin Biography