Chloe Chua plays Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 2

Singapore’s winsome darling of the violin, Chloe Chua, stars in Mozart’s lyrical Violin Concerto No.2, accompanied by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra with Chief Conductor Hans Graf.

Chloe Chua, violin @ChloeChuaviolinist
Hans Graf, Chief Conductor
Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Recorded at the Esplanade Concert Hall, Singapore, on 17 Oct, 2020.
The reduced orchestra and performance without an audience is due to restrictions in force during the COVID19 pandemic.
Premiered on SISTIC Live on 4 Dec 2020. YouTube Premiere, 4 Apr 2021

(c) Singapore Symphony Orchestra. The copying and republishing of any portion of this video is strictly not allowed without authorisation.

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756 - 1791)
Violin Concerto No. 2 in D major, K.211 (1775)

0:00 I. Allegro moderato
10:20 II. Andante
18:42 III. Rondeau. Allegro

Mozart’s violin concerti present a strange musicological problem: they were composed in a short period of time, but it is not clear what occasion prompted their creation, or who they were written for. A story is sometimes told that Mozart had been so inspired by a meeting with Haydn that he produced these five concerti in the span of half a year, but this sequence of events is more reliably attached to the six string quartets published as Opus 10, nicknamed the “Haydn Quartets”. Those came later, and are actually dedicated to Haydn. To add further to the muddle, the manuscripts of Mozart’s violin concerti had their dates tampered with: the fifth concerto had its 1775 date scratched out and replaced with 1780, and then changed back to 1775; for a long time, three other concerti were confused as Mozart’s, and given various numbers. In any case, these concerti were all composed before his likely first encounter with Haydn, though Mozart would already have been well aware of Haydn’s music long before then.

What is certain about the ones that are definitely Mozart’s (No. 1–5) is that they show him as a confident and youthful composer with a masterful command of string technique. Mozart was a world-class keyboardist and also an accomplished violinist, although he preferred playing the viola. The violin writing in these works is brilliant, always delicately poised against the orchestral forces. The first two show Mozart in ebullient form, and are perhaps the more difficult of the lot, with virtuosic writing involving very high solo lines.

Listen out for operatic elements in this concerto: by this point, Mozart had already written a dozen operas, including the highly accomplished La finta giardiniera, and this can be heard in the way groups of instruments interact. The pair of oboes add weight to orchestral tutti, anchoring the high violin lines. A lively first movement gives way to a wonderfully expansive pastorale, in which the oboes and horns punctuate cadences and act as signal-bearers for the solo violin. The rondo-finale actually opens with the violin solo leading the theme, an especially Mozartean touch, and dances its way to an exuberant end. (Thomas Ang)

CHLOE CHUA (b. 2007)
Young violinist Chloe Chua's meteoric rise on the classical music concert stage culminated in being awarded the joint 1st prize at the 2018 Yehudi Menuhin International Competition for Young Violinists.

The 13-year-old from Singapore had also garnered the top prize at the 24th Andrea Postacchini Violin Competition, and the 3rd prize at the 2017 Zhuhai International Mozart Competition. She has also been awarded prizes at Thailand International Strings Competition (Junior Category Grand Prize), Singapore National Piano and Violin Competition (1st Prize, Junior 2017, 3rd Prize Junior 2015).

She has been enrolled in the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts School of Young Talents (NAFA) since she was four, and is currently under the tutelage of Yin Ke, leader of their Strings programme.

Her stunning maturity and musicality has captured the hearts of audience around the world, and her performances have taken her to concerts hall across the U.K, Thailand, Italy, Germany, China, Saudi Arabia, USA and Singapore, and in festivals such as the New Virtuosi Queenswood Mastercourse, Atlanta Festival Academy and the Singapore Violin Festival. More recently, Chloe has performed with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, China Xiamen Philharmonic Orchestra, AFA festival Orchestra, Salzburg Chamber Soloists, Russian National Youth Orchestra under the baton of Maestro Yuri Bashme , Kammerorchester Basel conducted by Umberto Benedetti Michelangeli and the China Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Maestro Xia Xiaotang.

Chloe performs on a violin by Peter Guarneri of Venice, 1729, on generous loan from the Rin Collection.