Winner of the Queen Elisabeth Competition (2009) and the Yehudi Menuhin Competition (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 his friend and mentor Maxim Vengerov. Ray Chen’s premiere album Virtuoso, released worldwide on Sony Classical, won the prestigious Echo Klassik Award in 2...
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Winner of the Queen Elisabeth Competition (2009) and the Yehudi Menuhin Competition (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 his friend and mentor Maxim Vengerov. Ray Chen’s premiere album Virtuoso, released worldwide on Sony Classical, won the prestigious Echo Klassik Award in 2011. The recording has received glowing reviews from major media outlets including The Times and Chicago Tribune, which named it the “CD of the week”. Following the success of this album, Ray Chen was profiled by The Strad and Gramophone magazines as “the one to watch”. His 2011 recital tour featuring Virtuoso repertoire took him to Tokyo, Hamburg, Berlin, Munich, Zurich, and Dresden. Ray Chen continues to win the admiration of fans and fellow musicians worldwide. He received standing ovations at Ravinia and Schleswig-Holstein and his Verbier and Dresden Festival debuts resulted in immediate re-engagements. Other recent highlights of Ray’s rapidly developing career include successful debuts with Filarmonica della Scala, Spanish National Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and a sold-out performance with the Seoul Philharmonic and Maestro Myung-Whun Chung at the Asian Games Festival in Guangzhou. He is looking forward to his upcoming engagements with the Gewandhaus Orchestra, Montreal Symphony Orchestra, Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, and Israel Philharmonic, as well as the televised performance at the Nobel Prize concert in Stockholm with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and Maestro Eschenbach. Born in Taiwan and raised in Australia, Ray Chen was accepted to the Curtis Institute of Music at the age of 15, where he studied with Aaron Rosand. Mr. Chen plays the 1721 “Macmillan” Stradivarius provided as part of the award for winning the 2008-09 Young Concert Artists International Auditions in New York.
