Piano Trios by Beethoven, Berg, Mahler, and Staud - Sunday September 13th, 5:00pm -- POSTPONED

Lineup

• More details about Anna da Silva Chen, Violin

  Anna da Silva Chen, Violin

  Anna da Silva Chen is widely regarded as one of Australia’s leading concert violinists, known for her passion and virtuosity as a concerto soloist, chamber musician, concertmaster and director. She coleads the Alma Moodie Quartet and has been a member of the Australian Chamber Orchestra since 2024. As a soloist, Anna has performed with many of Australia’s major orchestras including the Sydney, Adelaide, Queensland, Tasmanian and Canberra Symphony Orchestras as well as various regional, youth and community orchestras. Concerto highlights include Elgar with the ASO, Shostakovich No. 1 with Ensemble Apex and West Phil, Beethoven with CSO and Steel City Strings, Brahms with NSSO, the Butterfly Lovers’ with QSO, and Sibelius and Tchaikovsky concerti with several orchestras. In 2024, she performed the Australian premiere of Max Reger’s 1908 Violin Concerto with Concerto Arcana. Overseas, she made her German debut in 2020 with the Göttingen Symphony Orchestra, toured Spain as a soloist with the SCM Wind Symphony Orchestra, performed several concerts and tutored chamber ensembles in the Netherlands’ 2022 Orlando Festival, and led a performance of Ligeti’s Melodien in Italy’s Chigiana International Festival 2024. By the age of 15, Anna won Australia’s Kendall National Violin Competition (1st and Audience Choice prizes), the National Youth Concerto Competition, Fine Music FM’s Young Virtuoso Award, and was a semi-finalist in the Menuhin International Violin Competition. She went on to win the overall prize of KPO’s NSW Concerto Competition, the Sydney Conservatorium’s Concerto Competition, University of Sydney Academic Merit Prizes, the Corrina Taylor Memorial Prize and the Miss Ada Thompson Scholarship, and was a frequent finalist in the ABC Young Performers Awards. In recent years she was a laureate of the Vienna and Gisborne International Music Competitions and one of 22 violinists selected to compete in the Carl Nielsen International Competition. Deeply motivated as a chamber musician and curator, Anna embraces complex and neglected works across many historical periods. As founding member of the Alma Moodie Quartet, she shares the dedication to the music their namesake championed — the classics as well as rarely played quartets by Schoenberg, Reger, Ligeti and Zemlinsky. She has performed as guest violinist with the Australia Ensemble, Omega Ensemble, Australia Piano Quartet, Ensemble Q, and Selby & Friends, as soloist, guest director, and concertmaster of Ensemble Apex, and as a festival artist in the Canberra International, Tasmanian, Brycefield Estate, and Newcastle Music Festivals. She has been privileged to perform chamber music alongside Richard Tognetti, Kristian Winther, Andrew Haveron, Julian Smiles, Shuann Chai, Daniel de Borah and Lee Dionne. Anna was born in Sydney and raised in Wollongong, beginning violin lessons at the age of 8 with Sarah Hindson. Anna maintains a strong connection to audiences on the South Coast and has continued to perform concerts at the Gerringong Music Club series almost every year since she was 11. She studied with Dr Robin Wilson in the Sydney Conservatorium’s Rising Stars program, as an undergraduate with Alice Waten, and lastly with Prof Mihaela Martin in Cologne, Germany. She has had memorable lessons with Eberhard Feltz (Conservatorio di Verona), Ilya Gringolts (Accademia Musicale Chigiana), Laurent Korcia, Kasia Hans, Johannes Meissl, Maxim Vengerov, Barnabás Kelemen, and Boris Kuschnir (Kronberg Academy).

• More details about Jonathan Békés, Cello

  Jonathan Békés, Cello

  Jonathan Békés is one of Australia’s leading cellists and is a renowned solo artist, chamber musician, orchestral musician and educator. Békés grew up in Campbelltown, Sydney and began playing the cello at the age of 10. He studied a Bachelor of Music (Performance) at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and completed the Professional Performance Program at the Australian National Academy of Music. He studied with some of Australia’s leading cellists including Howard Penny, Julian Smiles and Susan Blake. He has worked with and played for some of the world’s leading cellists including Steven Isserlis, Pieter Wispelway, Nicholas Altstaedt, Alban Gerhart and Peter Bruns. Békés is based in Hobart, Tasmania where he is the Principal cellist with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra. He also plays regularly with the Australian World Orchestra, with whom he toured to Singapore in 2016 and India in 2018. He has also played with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Békés has been principle cellist of the Australian Youth Orchestra, the Momentum Ensemble, the Musician’s Project, the Australian International Symphony Orchestra Institute and the Sydney Youth Orchestra. Békés is high demand as a chamber musician and frequently performs alongside world-renowned artists including Anthony Marwood, Stephan Dohr, Ole Bøhn, Howard Penny and Timothy Young. He is a founding member of the world renowned Tasmanian String Quartet, the award-winning Clarendon Trio; semi-finalists in the 2018 Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition, First Place in the 2017 ANAM Chamber Music Competition; as well as the Estivo Trio, who have performed across the world including acclaimed concert tours of China, America, Italy and Norway. Békés tours for Musica Viva and regularly presents chamber concerts across Tasmania as an artist for Virtuosi Tasmania. As a solo artist Békés performs often across Australia and throughout the world. He has played as soloist with many orchestras across Australia including the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, the Hobart Chamber Orchestra, the Sydney Youth Orchestra, the Beecroft Orchestra and the South Coast Orchestra. He presents a series of his own solo recitals and regional tours and frequently tours across Tasmania and mainland Australia. As an educator Békés is a passionate advocate for music for all people at all forms of life. He has taught extensively across Australia and runs a number of different projects and workshops throughout the country. He regularly takes masterclasses at conservatoriums and schools across the world. As an orchestral tutor and chamber coach Békés teaches around Australia at various institutions and orchestras including the Residential Summer String Camp, the Australian Doctors Orchestra, the Tasmanian Youth Orchestra and the Tasmanian Conservatorium of Music. Békés, in his spare time, is a keen sportsman and an outdoors enthusiast. He is an overly passionate golfer, crazed squash player and a true AFL fanatic. He follows the Sydney Swans and the Hobart Hurricanes, and goes on hiking and mountain biking adventures across Tasmania on a regular basis.

• More details about Lee Dionne, Piano

  Lee Dionne, Piano

  Described as “impressive” (NYTimes), “impeccable” (Fanfare Magazine), and “entrancing” (BBC Music Magazine), pianist Lee Dionne leads a varied, international career as a soloist, chamber musician, educator, artistic director, arranger, and speaker. He has performed numerous solo and chamber debut recitals in such venues as Carnegie Hall, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Jordan Hall, Merkin Hall, Spivey Hall, and the Philharmonic in Bratislava. For six years Lee toured the US and internationally as the founding pianist of the Merz Trio (2017-2023), with which he was a recipient of the prestigious Naumburg Award in Chamber Music and first prize winner of the Fischoff, Chesapeake, and Concert Artist Guild Competitions. Other chamber ensembles and organisations with which Lee has been associated include Yellow Barn Music Festival, Ensemble Connect, and Cantata Profana. Within Australia Lee has been presented as a soloist, chamber musician, speaker, and studio artist by such organisations as Piano+, the Sydney Writers’ Festival, the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Musica Viva, ABC Classic, and Fine Music Sydney. Lee is deeply indebted to a host of former teachers and mentors, including pianists Vivian Weilerstein, Boris Berman, Wei-Yi Yang, Matti Raekallio, Seth Knopp, Patricia Zander, and Wilma Machover; harpsichordist Arthur Haas; musicologists Michael Friedmann and Paul Berry; and chamber musicians Don Weilerstein, Mark Steinberg, Julio Elizalde, Gerhard Schutz, Kim Kashkashian, Isabel Charisius, Merry Peckham, and Alisdair Tate. Lee currently teaches piano, collaborative piano, and chamber music at the Sydney Conservatorium. Previous faculty positions include Yellow Barn's Young Artist Program and Yale University's Performance of Chamber Music Seminar.