Guest ArtistsRay Chen, violin

Winner of the Queen Elisabeth (2009) and Yehudi Menuhin Competitions (2008), Ray Chen is among the most compelling young violinists today. “Ray has proven himself to be a very pure musician with great qualities such as a beautiful youthful tone, vitality and lightness. He has all the skills of a truly musical interpreter,” said the great Maxim Vengerov.

Mr. Chen has released two critically acclaimed albums on Sony: a recital program Virtuoso of works by J.S. Bach, Tartini, Franck and Wieniawski, and the Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky concertos with Swedish Radio Orchestra and Daniel Harding. Following the success of these recordings, Mr. Chen was profiled by The Strad and Gramophone magazines as “the one to watch.” Virtuoso was distinguished with the prestigious ECHO Klassik award. His third recording, an all-Mozart album with Christoph Eschenbach and the Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra, was released in January 2014.

Mr. Chen continues to win the admiration of fans and fellow musicians worldwide. In 2012 he became the youngest soloist ever to perform in the televised Nobel Prize Concert for the Nobel Laureates and the Swedish Royal Family. His Carnegie Hall debut with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic and Sakari Oramo, as well as his sold-out Musikverein concert with the Gewandhaus Orchestra and Riccardo Chailly, was met with standing ovations. Ray Chen recently completed a 16-concert national recital tour of Australia and made his debut with the Orchestre National de France. He looks forward to an upcoming tour of China with the Gothenburg Symphony and Kent Nagano, and a European tour with the London Philharmonic and Christoph Eschenbach. Other highlights of the season include debuts with the Rotterdam Philharmonic, and a recital at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw.

Followed by over 1.8 million people people on SoundCloud, Ray Chen looks to expand the classical music audience by increasing its appeal to the younger generation via all available social media platforms. He is the first ever classical musician to be invited to write a regular blog about his life as a touring soloist for the largest Italian publishing house, RCS Rizzoli (Corriere della Sera, Gazzetta dello Sport, Max.) In his unstinting efforts to break down barriers between classical music, fashion and pop culture, he is supported by Giorgio Armani and was recently featured in Vogue magazine.

Born in Taiwan and raised in Australia, Ray Chen was accepted to the Curtis Institute of Music at age 15, where he studied with Aaron Rosand and was supported by Young Concert Artists. He plays the 1715 "Joachim" Stradivarius violin on loan from the Nippon Music Foundation. This instrument is one of the five 1715 violins once owned by the famed Hungarian violinist, Joseph Joachim (1831-1907).