Anny Chen

Anny Chen is a Taiwanese violinist currently studying at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater, Hamburg, in the class of Professor Tanja Becker-Bender. She started her musical education at the age of four and soon after began winning prizes at the Kiwanis Music Festival of Vancouver. She then received a full scholarship to attend the Purcell School for Young Musicians in London, where she studied until 2012 under the guidance of Evgene Grach, before studying at the Royal College of Music with Dr. Felix Andrievsky as the recipient of the prestigious ABRSM award from 2012-2015. Between 2010 and 2016, Anny was also an active participant of the Perlman Music Program in New York, where a select group of talented students from around the world have private lessons, chamber music and orchestral coaching with Itzhak Perlman regularly.

In 2001, at the age of 6, Anny won third prize at the Canadian Musical Competition (CMC) where she was the youngest participant. Since then she has had successes at numerous international competitions, including the third prize at the first Shu-Te Sylvia Lee Competition (Taiwan, 2016), title of Laureate and Further Studies Award at the Kloster Schöntal International Violin Competition, (Germany, 2011), first prize and prize for Best Performance of a Concerto at the Violin of the North International Competition (Russia, 2009) and was among seven semi-finalists at the Pablo de Sarasate International Violin Competition in Spain (2015). In 2016 Anny was also awarded first prize at the Elise Meyer Competition in Hamburg and the String Soloist prize at the ISA Music Festival in Austria.

As a soloist, Anny has given performances at prestigious venues such as the Wigmore Hall, LSO St. Luke's, St Martin in the Fields and the Leeds International Concert Series. She made her concerto debut in 2006 at the Acadèmia Internacional de Música de Solsona where she played the Bach A minor Concerto with the AIMS Chamber Orchestra, led by Leon Spierer, the former first concertmeister of the Berlin Philharmonic. She then performed with them again the following year, playing the Bach Double Violin Concerto in D minor. In 2007 and 2008 Anny was invited to perform the Bruch and Mendelssohn violin concertos with the Regent Orchestra in Alyesbury and in 2013 she performed La Folia by Corelli with the New Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra. In 2012, Anny was selected to lead the Purcell Symphony Orchestra in its 50th Anniversary Celebration Concert at the Royal Festival Hall and her solos in Holst's The Planets received special praise in a review by The Guardian. Recently Anny has performed the Lark Ascending by Vaughan-Williams with the St. Peters Chamber Orchestra, Oxford as well as Lalo's Symphony Espagnol with the Cambridge Graduates' Orchestra. Anny is also a keen chamber musician and has performed movements from the Brahms G minor Piano Quartet and Schubert's Trout Quintet at the Wigmore Hall in 2010 and 2012. In October 2017 Anny will be appearing as soloist to perform Kurt Weill's Violin Concert with the Hamburg Hochschule für Musik und Theater Symphony Orchestra.

She is kindly supported by the Oscar and Vera Ritter Foundation and is an Academist at the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra for the 2017/18 season.