Chanyapong Thongsawang

Dr. Chanyapong Thongsawang, Thai pianist and musicologist, received his PhD in musicology at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna in 2015. His dissertation was supervised by Prof. Dr. Hartmut Krones at the Institute of Musical Style Research. He was also a guest student under the co-supervision of Prof. Dr. Anselm Gerhard at the Institute of Musicology, University of Bern. Parallel to his PhD studies, he was a postgraduate piano student of Prof. Dr. Margit Haider-Dechant and took part in a pianoforte class of Wolfgang Brunner at the Anton Bruckner Private University in Linz, Austria. Currently he is a full time lecturer at Princess Galyani Vadhana Institute of Music.

Chanyapong was a piano student of Nat Yontararak in Bangkok from 1995 to 2004. Further study followed at Bern University of the Arts in Switzerland with Tomasz Herbut. He also took harpsichord lessons with Dirk Börner and fortepiano lessons with Edoardo Torbianelli. Moreover, he attended a conducting class with Dominique Roggen and Ludwig Wicki. He also studied in the chamber music class of Aleksandar Madzar, Louise Hopkins, Barbara Doll and Patricks Jüdt. He obtained master’s degrees both in Music Performance (2008) and Music Pedagogy (2010) there.

Chanyapong has also participated in numerous master classes conducted by renowned pianists such as Uberto Martinelli, Désiré N’ Kaoua, Jean Francois Antonioli, Barbara Hesse-Bukowska, Homero Francesch and Martin Hughes.

Chanyapong won the first prize from the 5th Nat-Studio Piano Competition in Bangkok in 1997. He received the excellent prize from the First International Chopin Piano Competition in Asia held in Japan in 2000. Two years later he won the first prize from the 6th Chopin Piano Competition in Bangkok and was invited to perform at the 22nd International Festival “Chopin in Autumn Colours” in Antonin, Poland in 2003. In addition, he has appeared three times at the music festival “Summer with Chopin” in Busko Zdroj, Poland. In 2008, he performed Mozart’s Piano Concerto K488 with the New Zürich Orchestra under Martin Studer in Switzerland. In 2010, he performed his debut recital in “Haus der Musik” in Vienna and received the third prize from the 18th International Music Competition Citta di Cortemilia in Italy.

Apart from his musical talent, he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering at Chulalongkorn University. From 2004 to 2008, he worked as a research assistant in the acoustics division of the Materials Science and Technology Research Institute (EMPA) in Dübendorf, Switzerland.