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Artist: Ray Chen
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Ray Chen:

Player 1

Decca Classics is thrilled to announce award-winning violinist, entrepreneur, and pioneer Ray Chen's innovative new album, Player 1, to be released globally on October 18, 2024. The first single, Sadness & Sorrow (from Naruto) by Toshio Masuda (arr. Benjamin Rimmer).

Blending classical music with the immersive world of gaming, the album also comprises a thrilling array of themes from television, Anime, and film including The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Pokémon, and Squid Game.

Recorded with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Cristian Macelaru, these compositions gravitate around the sonic centerpiece of Erich Korngold’s Violin Concerto. The Austrian composer was a pioneering 20th-century classical composer who became one of the first musicians of international stature to score films for Hollywood. Like Ray, Erich was a child prodigy. Like Ray, he was drawn to the dramatic and the cinematic. And like Ray, he understood the thrill of storytelling.

Nostalgia looms in surprising and uplifting ways on this album. Ray performs with the 1714 ‘Dolphin’ Stradivarius, which is on loan from the Nippon Foundation. This violin was once owned by Jascha Heifetz, who has been hailed as the greatest violin virtuoso since Niccolò Paganini and who premiered the Korngold Concerto in 1947. Ray is the web that binds everything together. “Player 1 aims to create a meaningful connection between the past and the present,” he says.

Ray Chen’s mission now is to challenge traditional perceptions of classical music, making it accessible and inspiring. Nintendo consoles, TV dramas, films, anime, soundtracks, and a near-century-old work by Korngold may at first seem like disparate cultural phenomena. But they have one thing in common. They weave fantasies. Player 1 is a contemporary journey into these fantastical realms.

Ray Chen:

Mendelssohn | Tchaikovsky Violin Concertos

Sony Classical is pleased to announce the release of Ray Chen's first concerto recording on the label with the two Romantic masterpieces that have played a significant role in the young artist's career to date. His interpretation of the Mendelssohn E minor Violin Concerto led to his triumph at the 2008 Yehudi Menuhin International Competition for Young Violinists. The following year the violinist's insightful performance of the Tchaikovsky Concerto secured him first prize at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels. For his second Sony release Ray Chen is joined by the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra under the baton of its musical director Daniel Harding.

 

Ray Chen:

Virtuoso

"Ray Chen can do pretty much anything he wants on the violin" - The Washington Post

Sony Classical announces the release of Virtuoso the debut album on the label from the acclaimed young violinist Ray Chen. Winner of the Queen Elisabeth Competition (2009) and the Yehudi Menuhin Competition (2008), Chen has received rave reviews from critics, and high praise from distinguished musicians around the globe for the fresh insight he brings to his performances and a musical authority far beyond his age. Virtuoso, Chen's first recording for Sony Classical represents a selection of his personal favorites from different strands of the violin repertoire.

Ray Chen:

Mozart: Violin Concertos | Sonata

Sony Classical is pleased to announce the new album from acclaimed violinist Ray Chen – a recording fully dedicated to works by Mozart. The album includes Mozart's Violin Concertos K216 in G Major and K218 in D Major, for which Ray Chen composed his own cadenzas, plus Violin Sonata K305 in A Major. Ray Chen is joined by the internationally renowned interpreter of Mozart's works Christoph Eschenbach, who not only conducts the Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra in the concertos, but also performs with Ray Chen on the piano for the sonata.

Ray Chen:

Solace

Award-winning recording artist Ray Chen announces his new studio album fully professionally recorded and released from home during the global lockdown. Entitled Solace, Ray shares works from J. S. Bach's Six Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin, released digitally on August 7 via Decca Classics.

The events of 2020 which brought the world to a standstill have also created a time for self-reflection, and a renewed appreciation of the power of music. Ray explains, "Music heals the soul, it calms us, centers us, and creates focus in our lives. Bach's music, in particular, written so far ahead of its time, reminds us of an important message: that humanity struggles onwards despite the odds."

Ray Chen:

The Golden Age

Deemed one of today's most charismatic and compelling young violinists, Ray Chen reveals his new album The Golden Age – a thrilling collection of chamber and orchestral works – to be released on June 8. It is his first recording on Decca Classics since signing to the label last year.

The Violinist handpicked a selection of works for the upcoming album, all of which celebrate the "golden age" of the violin – not only in terms of repertoire, but also in terms of performance style and ingenuity. The centrepiece is Max Bruch's Violin Concerto, performed with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Robert Trevino and recorded in August last year.

The album opens with a piece for string quartet, which has already garnered over 50,000 hits on Chen's YouTube channel – it's called A New Satiesfaction and it features Gymnopédie No.1 by Erik Satie, with an allusion to Rossini's William Tell Overture. It is performed by Chen and his Made in Berlin quartet, all of whom are members of the Berlin Philharmonic.

The album also features compositions and arrangements from legendary violinists as Fritz Kreislerand Jascha Heifetz, which Ray performs with pianist Julien Quentin. Among the compositions are Kreisler's Syncopation, Schön Rosmarin and his version of Cyril Scott's Lotus Land, in addition to Heifetz's transcriptions of Estrellita by Manuel Ponce and George Gershwin's Summertime. Stephan Koncz has also arranged Debussy's Clair de lune and the traditional Australian favourite Waltzing Matilda (Chen hails from Australia and Taiwan).

Ray Chen has performed with many of the world's leading musicians in concert halls across the globe and has amassed a large online following, including more than 2 million fans on SoundCloud, through quirky, self-made videos and engaging social media posts.

Teasing his new album with a custom-built computer game, Chen promises to please with his inventive and exciting new album, The Golden Age. He says, "This album acknowledges the various styles of the past, but also retains one important philosophy: as long as we keep inspiring and producing, perhaps what we create now will one day be deemed worthy of being named a golden age."