Chloe Chua, Ziyu He, Singapore Symphony Orchestra & Hans Graf
Biographie Chloe Chua, Ziyu He, Singapore Symphony Orchestra & Hans Graf
Chloe Chua
(b. 2007) shot to international stardom after winning the joint 1st Prize at the 2018 Yehudi Menuhin International Competition for Young Violinists.
The young star from Singapore has also garnered the 1st prize at the 24th Andrea Postacchini Violin Competition, 3rd prize at the 2017 Zhuhai International Mozart Competition, as well as accolades at the Thailand International Strings Competition (Junior Category Grand Prize) and the Singapore National Piano & Violin Competition (1st Prize, Junior 2017; 3rd Prize, Junior 2015).
Her stunning musicality despite her young age has captured the hearts of audiences around the world, and her performances have taken her to concert halls and orchestras across the U.S.A., U.K., Italy, Germany, Denmark, Saudi Arabia, China, Thailand and Singapore, in festivals such as the Copenhagen Summer Festival, New Virtuosi Queenswood Mastercourse, Atlanta Festival Academy and the Singapore Violin Festival.
Called “one of the most promising young musicians in the world” by PBS’s Great Performances, America’s preeminent multi award-winning performing arts television series, Chloe starred in its season 51 episode Now Hear This – Rising Stars, broadcast in April 2024.
Chloe was Artist-In-Residence of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra (SSO) during their 2022/23 and 2023/24 seasons - the youngest ever to be appointed to this role. She performed to an estimated 18,000 attendees across 18 performances and starred in multiple recording projects during this period. Her debut album of The Four Seasons and Locatelli’s Harmonic Labyrinth on the award-winning Pentatone label garnered 1.6 million streams and over 400,000 plays during its first year of release on Spotify and Apple Music respectively. Chloe’s upcoming albums with the SSO include the Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto, Paganini Violin Concerto No. 1 and a set of complete Mozart Violin Concertos with SSO Music Director Hans Graf.
At age 4, Chloe began her violin studies at Singapore’s Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA) School of Young Talents, honing her skills under the tutelage of Yin Ke.
Chloe performs on a Giovanni Battista Guadagnini, Milan, 1753, on generous loan from the Rin Collection.
Ziyu He
The outstanding violinist Ziyu He was one of the youngest soloists with the Vienna Philharmonic when he made his debut with this world-class orchestra under Adam Fischer at the Musikverein in 2017 at the age of just 17. The year before, he won both the International Mozart Competition in Salzburg and the Yehudi Menuhin Competition, and in 2014 he was the Eurovision Young Musician of the Year.
He has performed with the Vienna Philharmonic, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, the Mariinsky Orchestra St. Petersburg, Macau Orchestra, Suzhou Philharmonic, Vienna Chamber Orchestra, Beethoven Philharmonic, RAI National Orchestra, Ulster Orchestra, Bochum Symphony Orchestra, China Philharmonic, Shanghai Philharmonic, Beijing Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra of the National Center for the Performing Arts, Georgian Philharmonic Orchestra, Filarmonica del Teatro Comunale di Bologna, Orchestra della Toscana, Zagreb Philharmonic, Sofia Philharmonic, Singapore Symphony Orchestra and Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg. Among the conductors with whom he has worked are Adam Fischer, Christopher Warren-Green, Choo Hoey, Tung-Chieh Chuang, David Brophy, Diego Matheuz, Guoyong Zhang, Howard Griffiths, Ilyich Rivas, Joji Hattori, Kazuki Yamada, Kerem Hasan, Kriistina Poska, Lu Jia, Michele Nitti, Nikoloz Rachveli, Pietari Inkinen, Thomas Rösner, Riccardo Minasi, Steven Sloane, Lio Kuokman, Valery Gergiev and Hans Graf.
Ziyu He recently made his debut with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra under Lio Kuokman, and was invited by Hans Graf to join the Singapore Symphony Orchestra on several occasions for concerts and CD recordings. He has also performed with the Camerata Schweiz, the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra and Howard Griffiths, as well as with the Sofia Philharmonic under Uros Lajovic, played concerts at the BBC Belfast Proms and made his debut at the George Enescu Festival. Highlights of the past year include a concert and recordings of works by Hans Werner Henze with the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg under Maestra Lin Liao and solo recitals at the Vienna Konzerthaus in the "Great Talents" series. A concert with Suzhou Symphony and Thomas Rösner, performances in Munich in the "Rising Stars" series and with Benjamin Schmid round off the current season. As the violinist with the renowned Altenberg Trio, he regularly plays in their popular concert series in the Brahms Hall of the Vienna Musikverein.
Ziyu He began learning the violin at the age of five with Xiangrong Zhang in his native China. At the age of just 10 he was invited by Paul Roczek to study with him at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg. Ziyu completed his master's degree in violin there in summer 2021 and began postgraduate studies with Benjamin Schmid, and a master's degree in viola with Thomas Riebl, which he completed with distinction in February 2023. He plays the 1698 "ex Rouse-Boughton"violin by Antonio Stradivari on loan from the Austrian National Bank and a Giuseppe Guadagnini viola, dated 1797, made available to him by generous private sponsors.
Hans Graf
Known for his wide range of repertoire and creative programming, the distinguished Austrian conductor Hans Graf is one of today’s most highly respected and experienced musicians. With Hans Graf, “a brave new world of music-making under inspired direction” (The Straits Times) began at the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, where he was unanimously appointed Chief Conductor from the 2020/21 season, and then Music Director from the 2022/23 season.
Maestro Graf also currently holds the title of Principal Guest Conductor of the Aalborg Symphony Orchestra of Denmark and formerly served as Music Director of the Houston Symphony Orchestra, the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, L’Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine, The Basque National Orchestra Euskadi and the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg.
He has appeared with nearly all major orchestras of the United States including the Boston Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Detroit Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, the Pittsburgh Symphony, the St. Louis Symphony, the Dallas Symphony, the Indianapolis Symphony, the Minnesota Orchestra and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra; and in Canada with Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and the National Arts Centre Orchestra Ottawa.
In Europe, Graf has conducted the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, the Vienna Symphony, the Tonkuenstler Orchestra of Austria, in Germany the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Leipzig Gewandhausorchester, the DSO Berlin, the Dresden Philharmonic, the Konzerthaus Rochester Berlin and many others; in Holland the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, the Rotterdam Philharmonic, the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, and the Residentie Orchestra; in Belgium the Orchestre National de Belgique and the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, in Scandinavia the Danish National Radio Orchestra, the Oslo Symphony, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, the Finnish National Radio Orchestra, and many others in the United Kingdom the London Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Hallé Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and many others; in Russia the St Petersburg Philharmonic and Russian National Orchestra, in Eastern Europe the Budapest Festival Orchestra and still so many others. In the Far East and Southern Hemispheres Graf is a regular guest with the Sydney Symphony, the Melbourne Symphony, the Auckland Philharmonia, the Seoul Philharmonic and the KBS Orchestra Seoul, the Hong Kong and Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestras and the National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan.
A frequent conductor at the Salzburg Festival since 1983, Graf has also participated in the prestigious festivals of Maggio Musicale, Bregenz, Aix-en-Provence in Europe, and in the US, the Tanglewood, Blossom, Aspen, Grant Park and the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festivals.
In the world of opera, Maestro Graf has led many performances at the Vienna State Opera and in various of the opera houses of Munich, Berlin, Paris and Rome, among others. More recent productions include Wagner’s Parsifal in Zurich and Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov in Strasbourg. In 2014 he was awarded the Österreichischer Musiktheaterpreis for Richard Strauss’s Die Feuersnot at the famed Vienna Volksoper, where he returned in 2021 to lead Richard Strauss’ beloved Der Rosenkavalier.
Hans Graf’s extensive discography is found on the EMI, Orfeo, CBC, Erato, Capriccio and JVC labels and includes all the symphonies of Mozart and Schubert, the complete orchestral works of Henri Dutilleux (recorded under the composer’s supervision), and the world-premiere recording of Zemlinsky’s Es war einmal. Graf’s semi-staged production of Berg’s Wozzeck with the Houston Symphony won both the GRAMMY and ECHO Klassik awards for best opera recording.
Born near Linz in 1949, Graf studied conducting with Franco Ferrara, Sergiu Celibidache and Arvid Jansons. He is Professor Emeritus for Orchestral Conducting at the Universität Mozarteum in Salzburg. For his services to music, he was awarded the Chevalier de l’Ordre de la Légion d’Honneur by the French government and the Grand Decoration of Honour in Gold from the Republic of Austria.
