A large and very excited audience gives violin superstar Ray Chen a rock star welcome when he takes the stage for his Melbourne recital in Hamer Hall. Born in Taiwan, Chen was raised in Australia before travelling to the USA as a teenager to further his career.

Chen’s accompanist for his 2025 tour is the American pianist Lee Dionne, now based in Sydney, where he lectures in piano and chamber music at the Sydney Conservatorium.

The program opens with Kreisler’s arrangements of baroque composer Giuseppe Tartini’s Devil’s Trill sonata. Tartini claimed the music, played by the Devil, came to him in a dream. When he woke, he tried to recreate it.  

Tartini’s music – especially with Kreisler’s cadenza – is fiendishly difficult. For mere mortals. Chen makes it seem effortless as he weaves filigree trills into the increasingly ornate melody. 

The Tartini, Chen says, is the appetiser in this musical meal. 

Ray Chen. Portrait supplied

The first of two main courses is César Franck’s violin sonata, written as a wedding present for violinist Eugène Ysaÿe. The four contrasting movements traverse the full gamut of emotions with constant interplay between the...