Bobby Chen 

Pianist Bobby Chen entered the Yehudi Menuhin School as a pupil of Ruth Nye in 1991. During his time at the School he participated in masterclasses with eminent pianists and teachers such as Fanny Waterman, John Lill, Charles Rosen, Rolf Hind, Nikolai Demidenko and Krystian Zimerman. Further masterclasses in Salzburg with Dimitri Bashkirov culminated in a solo recital at the Mozarteum. In 1996 Bobby Chen was selected as a soloist in a CD issue on the Classic FM label entitled ’Yehudi Menuhin’s Young Virtuosi’ and toured Britain with Lord Menuhin and the Warsaw Sinfonia performing Beethoven’s Triple Concerto.  1997 saw an appearance at the Royal Festival Hall playing the 4^th Prokoviev Sonata as part of the South Bank Prokoviev Festival.

In recent years Bobby Chen has travelled extensively giving recitals and concerto performances, not only in London, the Home Counties and Scotland, but also in Malaysia, Singapore and China.  Following his concerto début in 1998 with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Lan Shui playing Rachmaninov’s Paganini Variations, he received a further invitation to play Beethoven’s 2^nd Concerto in 2000.  In October of 2000 he toured with Nicholas Daniel, the Britten Sinfonia and the Cavendish Singers as part of the John Lewis Partnership’s Golden Jubilee Celebrations. Performances at this time included a two-recital event with the renowned Russian pianist Nikolai Demidenko and the honour of being the first Malaysian pianist to be invited to play in the concert hall at the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields under Sir Neville Marriner, with Beethoven’s Concerto no. 1.  So successful was this concert that he was invited back to Malaysia to give two performances with the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra of Rachmaninov’s Concerto no. 4, plus further solo recitals in Kuching and Koto Kinabalu in May 2003. In January 2003, Bobby Chen made his début appearance at London’s Wigmore Hall.

In his four years at the Royal Academy of Music, where he studied with Ruth Nye and graduated with First Class Honours, Bobby Chen won no fewer than eight coveted awards, including that for the best final recital, and graduated with first class honours. Other awards include a Yamaha European Foundation Scholarship, Royal Overseas League Prize and, most recently, he won the Musicians’ Benevolent Fund Music Education Award for the academic year 2002/03, as well as inclusion in the Countess of Munster Musical Trust Recital Scheme. He is also currently supported by the John Lewis Partnership. His solo début recording on the Jaques Samuel label was followed by a further CD of virtuoso works with the cellist Leonid Gorokhov on the Cello Classics label, and a new solo disc of his Wigmore concert was recently released, again on the Jaques Samuel label.