Cecile Licad, piano, is considered the foremost Filipina pianist of our time. She has shown brightly in solo literature, chamber works, and as soloist in concertos throughout the world. Her teacher, the great Rudolf Serkin, said “Cecile Licad has an incredible instinct for all kinds of music and seems equally at home at any style.”
Licad began her piano studies at the age of three and made her debut as soloist with the Philharmonic Orchestra in Manila at age seven. At the age of 12, she was admitted to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where she studied with renowned teachers Rudolf Serkin, Mieczyslaw Horszowski, and Seymour Lipkin. She became a regular visitor at the Marlboro Festival, where she often played duet literature with Horszowski.
In 1981, Licad’s international career was launched after receiving the prestigious Leventritt Award gold medal. Since then, she has been among the most traveled pianists in the world, performing as a soloist with renowned orchestras such as the Chicago, Cleveland, Boston, Philadelphia, London, and National symphonies, the New York Philharmonic, and the major orchestras of Germany, Japan, and Russia. In addition, she has worked with esteemed conductors Ozawa, Previn, Abaddo, Dutoit, Marriner, Ormandy, and Solti (her highly acclaimed performance with Solti of Tchaikovsky’s Concerto No. 1 has been widely viewed on YouTube).
Licad is also an avid chamber musician who has performed as a soloist with leading string quartets such as Guarneri and Takács, and has collaborated with some of the most celebrated instrumentalists of our time, including violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, cellist Alban Gerhardt, and Peter Serkin. Her album recording of Chopin works was awarded the Grand Prix du Disque, and her recording of the music of Louis Moreau Gottschalk on Naxos Records has been one of the label’s best sellers. Over the years, Licad has developed a deep interest in the neglected piano music of American composers from the Revolution era to the present day, and her four recent CDs of American piano music on the Danacord label have garnered extraordinary reviews throughout the world. Her next recording with Danacord is the complete piano and orchestra works of George Gershwin. In addition, she recently collaborated with Wynton Marsalis on the film Louis by Dan Pritzker.
Learn more about Licad.
