Vienna Salon - Saturday, September 12th, 5:00pm

Lineup

• More details about Anna da Silva Chen

  Anna da Silva Chen

  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 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, and arranger.​ He has performed numerous solo and chamber recitals in such venues as Carnegie Hall, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Jordan Hall, Merkin Hall, Spivey Hall, and the Philharmonic in Bratislava, the Sydney Opera House, Melbourne’s Town Hall and Hamer Hall, and the Queensland Performing Arts Centre. 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. Originally from the United States (greater NYC area), Lee relocated to Australia in 2023, where he joined flautist Rosie Gallagher in founding Hayes Street Studio, an international centre for chamber music in Sydney that presents 20-30 concerts of chamber music annually, featuring a roster of leading Australian and international musicians.  ​ ​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. As an artistic director, Lee is passionate about crafting vibrant programs that connect with audiences through their diversity of style and compositional voice, as well as their virtuosity, emotional intensity, and sense of play. Lee has collaborated widely not only with musicians, but also with directors Eugene Lynch, Jon Levin, and Emma Jaster, dancer Caroline Copeland, puppeteers Eric and Shoshana Bass, and filmmakers Ben Ryan and Chris Kitchen. He has curated and contributed music to events hosted by the Yale Art Gallery, Sydney Writers' Festival, and Person Place Thing Podcast with Randy Cohen. 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 is currently a lecturer in solo piano and chamber music at the Sydney Conservatorium. Previous faculty appointments include Yellow Barn's Young Artist Program and Yale University's Performance of Chamber Music Seminar.