Portland Piano International's 49th Season Invites Audiences Into Seven Sundays of Discovery
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Curated by Boris Giltburg, the 2026–27 season brings Gabriela Montero, Jan Lisiecki, Ying Li, Inon Barnatan, Tiffany Poon, Nikola Meeuwsen — and Giltburg himself — to Lincoln Performance Hall, October 2026 through May 2027.
Oct. 25, 2026 – May 9, 2027 · Lincoln Performance Hall, Portland State University
Media Contact: Jonathan Eifert · 347.741.1913
jonathan.eifert@goldsoundmedia.com
The 49th Season
PORTLAND, OR — Portland Piano International invites Portland audiences to the seven recitals that make up its 2026–27 season — a year of programs curated by Boris Giltburg and built to give people a new way into music they may have thought they already knew. The 49th season runs Oct. 25, 2026 through May 9, 2027 at Lincoln Performance Hall and features Gabriela Montero, Jan Lisiecki, Ying Li, Inon Barnatan, Boris Giltburg, Tiffany Poon, and Nikola Meeuwsen.
What ties the season together is Giltburg's eye for programs that turn each recital into its own case for the music it contains. One Sunday belongs to a Venezuelan pianist who improvises — and whose heritage makes the Iberian and Latin American repertoire native ground. Another sets Chopin's complete ballade cycle alongside the John Field nocturnes that gave Chopin the form. A third turns over three of the great Romantic character cycles to a pianist who recorded one for Naxos, edited another for Henle, and built a parallel career writing publicly about the repertoire he plays. Across the full season, listeners encounter four centuries of piano repertoire and more than half a dozen national traditions — seven Sundays, each offering a different reason to be in the hall.
A First Look at the Season
Gabriela Montero — Sunday, Oct. 25, 2026, 4 p.m. Few touring pianists still improvise in concert, and Montero is the most prominent of those who do; she closes every recital by extemporizing on themes called out from the hall, making each performance literally unrepeatable. The all-Iberian program she brings to Portland is one she is touring this season to the Barbican and 92NY — native ground for the Venezuelan-born pianist who has spent her career arguing for the Latin American voice in classical music. The afternoon includes Scarlatti and Soler sonatas, Albéniz's “Triana” (from Iberia, Book II), Granados's Valses poéticos, Chopin's Bolero, op. 19, and Liszt's Spanish Rhapsody. Montero is also a publicly outspoken voice on Venezuelan politics — the first Honorary Consul of Amnesty International and the 2024 recipient of the Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent. The recital is sponsored by Susan and Dean Alterman.
“Crackling rhythmic brio, subtle shadings, steely power.” — The New York Times
Jan Lisiecki — Sunday, Nov. 8, 2026, 4 p.m. Lisiecki's all-dance program is a current touring concept; he is performing essentially the same recital this season at the Tonhalle Zürich, Laeiszhalle Hamburg, Teatro della Pergola Florence, the Palau de la Música Catalana, and Cambridge's West Road Concert Hall. The program is anchored in Polish identity — Szymanowski's Four Polish Dances and Chopin's Polonaise in A-flat Major, op. 53 — repertoire native to the Polish-Canadian pianist whose Deutsche Grammophon contract has produced a Chopin-heavy discography since the label signed him at 15 (the Études op. 10 and 25 in 2013, the complete Nocturnes in 2021). The full afternoon ranges through Martinů's Three Czech Dances, Falla's “Danza española no. 1” (from La vida breve), Schubert's 16 German Dances, Bartók's Romanian Folk Dances, Ginastera's Danzas argentinas, waltzes by Brahms, Piazzolla's Libertango, Albéniz's “Tango” (from España, op. 165), and Falla's “Ritual Fire Dance” (from El amor brujo). The recital is sponsored by John Barker.
“Plays Schumann like a legend.” — ClassicFM
Ying Li — Sunday, Dec. 6, 2026, 4 p.m. Li's program is unusually weighted toward transcriptions and operatic paraphrases — the long tradition of pianists claiming for the keyboard what other instruments and theaters have done first. The afternoon includes Busoni's transcription of Bach's Chaconne in D Minor (from the Partita No. 2 for Solo Violin, BWV 1004), Agosti's transcription of Stravinsky's Firebird, and two of Liszt's most theatrical paraphrases — on Verdi's Rigoletto and Bellini's Norma — alongside Amy Beach's Four Sketches, op. 15. Anchoring the program is Qigang Chen's Instants d'un opéra de Pékin, a direct line to Li's heritage: Chen was Messiaen's last private student, and like Li he trained at Beijing's Central Conservatory before moving abroad. A 2021 Young Concert Artists First Prize winner and the inaugural Premio Antonio Mormone laureate, Li studied at Curtis with Jonathan Biss and continues her Artist Diploma at Juilliard with Robert McDonald. The recital is sponsored by Carole Alexander.
“Runs, passage work, and trills sparkle, with not a note out of place.” — Ionarts
Inon Barnatan — Sunday, Jan. 24, 2027, 4 p.m. Barnatan is among the most narrative programmers of his generation; his 2021 Pentatone album Time-Traveler's Suite threads Baroque movements by Bach, Handel, Rameau, and Couperin through Ravel, Ligeti, Barber, and Thomas Adès into Brahms's Handel Variations. This Portland recital follows the same instinct. The program traces the nocturne and the ballade across a century and a half: Chopin's complete cycle of four Ballades, three nocturnes by John Field (the Irish composer who invented the form and taught Chopin how to use it), Samuel Barber's Nocturne, op. 33 (“Homage to John Field”), and mazurkas by Karol Szymanowski and Thomas Adès — both inheritors of Chopin's national-dance idiom. Barnatan has commissioned and premiered new work by Adès himself. The Israeli-American pianist was the inaugural Artist-in-Association of the New York Philharmonic (2014–2017), a three-season appointment created for him under then-music director Alan Gilbert. The recital is sponsored by Robin Power and David Wacker.
“Can do almost anything with tone.” — The New York Times
Boris Giltburg — Sunday, March 14, 2027, 4 p.m. (Guest Artistic Curator). The season's curator takes the stage with a program of three of the great Romantic character cycles: Prokofiev's Visions fugitives, op. 22; Schumann's Carnaval, op. 9; and Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. Giltburg has lived inside this material in ways unusual even for a major recording artist. His Schumann Carnaval / Davidsbündlertänze / Papillons on Naxos (2015) was his first commercial recording for the label, where he has been an exclusive artist since his 2013 Queen Elisabeth Competition win. He wrote the editorial fingerings for the Henle Verlag scholarly edition of Prokofiev's Visions fugitives. And his Beethoven 32 project — recording, filming, and publicly blogging all 32 Beethoven sonatas through 2020 — has established him as a working pianist who also writes seriously about the repertoire he plays. The recital is sponsored by Kris and Michael Kern.
“Interplay of spiritual calm and emphatic engagement is gripping.” — Süddeutsche Zeitung
Tiffany Poon — Sunday, April 11, 2027, 4 p.m. Two of the Ravel selections Poon brings to Portland — “Oiseaux tristes” and “Une barque sur l'océan,” from Miroirs — appear on her 2025 Pentatone album Nature, a French Impressionist program she recorded at Miraval Studios with GRAMMY-winning producer Damien Quintard. The recital expands that recording's literary, evocation-led sensibility into a full program of poignancy and mystery: Chopin's Étude in E Major, op. 10, no. 3 (“Tristesse”) and Barcarolle in F-sharp Major, op. 60; Liszt's Deux Légendes, S. 175 (including “Saint François d'Assise: la prédication aux oiseaux”); Prokofiev's Sonata No. 7 in B-flat Major, op. 83 (“War Sonata”); Lili Boulanger's “D'un jardin clair” (from Trois Morceaux); two pieces from Mel Bonis's Femmes de Légende; Vecsey's Valse triste in Cziffra's transcription; Schubert's Ständchen (“Serenade”) in Liszt's transcription; Liszt's Liebestraum No. 3; and Kreisler's Liebesleid in Rachmaninoff's transcription. Poon, who was born in Hong Kong, raised in New York, and trained at Juilliard Pre-College and Columbia, has also built one of the largest contemporary classical-music presences on YouTube — roughly 330,000 subscribers, more than 50 million views — and founded the Together with Classical nonprofit in 2020. The recital is sponsored by Maryellen and Michael McCulloch.
“Beautiful sound, sensitivity and expressive nuance.” — International Piano
Nikola Meeuwsen — Sunday, May 9, 2027, 4 p.m. Meeuwsen closes the season as the first Dutch pianist ever to win the piano edition of the Queen Elisabeth Competition (Brussels, 2025) — and he programs accordingly. The recital is built around two of the most demanding works in the literature: Beethoven's “Hammerklavier,” op. 106, widely considered the most technically and structurally formidable of the sonatas, and Brahms's left-hand transcription of Bach's Chaconne (the fifth of his 5 Studies for Piano, Anh. 1a/1) — Brahms's homage to a violin masterwork, transferred to a single hand. Between them sit Liszt's Three Sonetti del Petrarca, S. 270, settings of the great Italian love poems, and Schubert's Four Impromptus, op. 90, D. 899. Born in The Hague in 2002, Meeuwsen trained at Imola's Accademia Pianistica with Enrico Pace and currently studies with Frank Braley at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel. The recital is sponsored by The Standard.
“Suave technique tapped right into the delicacy and beauty of everything he played.” — The Times
Beyond the Concert Hall
The 2026–27 season's programming extends beyond the recitals themselves. Pre-Concert Conversations with executive director Bill Crane and resident musicologist Amelia de Vaal begin 45 minutes before every Sunday recital and are free to all ticket holders. Two of the season's pianists also lead master classes through Beyond the Score: Gabriela Montero on Monday, Oct. 26, 2026 at 7 p.m., and Boris Giltburg on Saturday, March 13, 2027 at 10:30 a.m. Both take place at Portland Piano Company (8700 NE Columbia Ct, Portland) and are free and open to the public.
Subscriptions and Tickets
Subscriptions are on sale now at portlandpiano.org or by phone at 503.228.1388. Subscribers receive priority seating, save up to 26% against single-ticket pricing, and gain easy exchange privileges through the season. Subscription prices are $385 (Keyboard View) and $301 (Non-Keyboard View) for all seven recitals. Single tickets go on sale June 1, 2026 at $63 (Keyboard View) and $53 (Non-Keyboard View). Student and Arts for All tickets are available at the door, subject to availability.
Forty-Eight Seasons of Solo Piano
In its first 48 seasons, Portland Piano International has presented 261 pianists who have played 1,836 pieces, offered 87 master classes, and commissioned 19 original compositions. The 49th season continues that work.
2026–27 Season at a Glance
All recitals take place at Lincoln Performance Hall, Portland State University, Portland, OR.
Tickets, Information, and Media Contact
Tickets and Information: portlandpiano.org or 503.228.1388.
Media Contact: Jonathan Eifert, 347.741.1913, jonathan.eifert@goldsoundmedia.com. High-resolution photos are available on request.
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About Portland Piano International
Portland Piano International has presented more than 260 pianists in recital and through outreach activities. Some of the greatest pianists in the world of music have played for Portland audiences because of this organization. While pianists have many opportunities to play the concerto repertoire, this is one of only a handful of recital series that remains devoted to the solo piano recital. Portland Piano International is a vital part of Portland's quality cultural life and has consistently garnered praise from both the local and national media, heralded a “consistently brilliant Piano Recital Series” (Willamette Week) and “one of this city's musical treasures” (The Oregonian).