Biography (read more)
Fou Ts’ong was born in Shanghai on 10 March 1934, son of the translator Fu Lei, and first studied with Mario Paci, founder of the Shanghai Symphony. Third prize and the mazurka prize at the 1955 Chopin Competition made him the first Chinese pianist of international standing; he settled in London in 1958. His parents, persecuted in the Cultural Revolution, took their own lives in 1966. He died in London of Covid-19 on 28 December 2020.
Fou’s Chopin — above all the mazurkas, whose prize he took in Warsaw — joined a Chinese literati sensibility to the Polish idiom, and his readings remain among the most personal in the discography. As teacher and juror he shaped generations of Asian pianists, and his presence in this catalogue marks the point where the Chopin tradition became fully global.
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