Carl Pini

Carl Pini is a musician of international reputation. He began his career in London in 1960 as Leader of the London String Quartet and from 1968 spent six years in Sydney forming the Sinfonia of Sydney and the Carl Pini Quartet with whom he made three world tours. He also conducted the Sydney, South Australian and West Australian Orchestras and conducted the English Chamber Orchestra at the 1974 Edinburgh Festival.

In 1975 he was appointed Concertmaster of the Philharmonia in London and during the next six years appeared as soloist in concertos of Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart and Prokofiev with Riccardo Muti, Sir Adrian Boult and Zdenek Maçal.

In 1980 Carl Pini was appointed Assistant Conductor of the Hong Kong Philharmonic, and from 1983 to 1988 he was Artistic Director of the Australian Chamber Orchestra, leading the ACO on its Bicentennial Tours of the USA and Europe. He has conducted several seasons of opera, including La Boheme, Don Pasquale, Julius Caeser and Le Cinesi.

Carl Pini was Concertmaster of the Melbourne Symphony from 1990 until 1995. In 1992 he premiered the Richard Mills violin concerto and since 1990 has conducted the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra on several occasions.
In 1998 the Carl Pini Quartet performed the complete cycle of Beethoven Quartets. He plays with various chamber music groups including Pini, Hazelwood & Friends which perform an annual concert series at Turramurra Uniting Church.

Carl Pini is an Honorary Member of the Royal College of Music in London, and has taught violin and conducting at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, Melbourne and Monash Universities and the Conservatorium of Music and the Australian Institute of Music in Sydney. He is currently the Artistic Director for the Riverina Summer School for Strings.

Susan Blake

Susan Blake won the ABC Instrumental and Vocal Competition in 1977 and in the following year graduated as Student of the Year from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.  She was awarded a Churchill Fellowship and an Australia Council International Study Grant.  While studying under Heinrich Schiff at the Basle Music Academy she was awarded the Hans Hubert Bloch Stiftung and completed her postgraduate studies in 1982, graduating with the Solisten Diploma.  In 1985 she was appointed Lecturer in ‘Cello at the Sydney Conservatorium, a position she still holds. 

Greatly in demand as a teacher,  Susan regularly gives summer courses in Austria as well as workshops and classes for the Australian String Teachers Association and tertiary music institutions throughout the country.  She records for ABC Classics, Tall Pollies, Sounds Australia and 2MBS-FM.  She has appeared as soloist with chamber orchestras in Austria, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, South America and with orchestras throughout Australia and is a member of several ensembles which have toured nationally with Musica Viva.  The instrument on which Susan plays was made by Giovanni Grancino in Milan in 1701.

Gu Chen

Chen Gu is at the beginning of his international career.  He began violin lessons at four and gave his first public performance at the age of nine, after winning the first prize in the Shanghai Music Competition.  In 1993 he was a prize winner of the 5th National Violin Competition in China and played recitals and concerto performances with orchestras in Shanghai, Beijing and many other cities of China.  Moving to Sydney in 1996, he studied at the Australian Institute of Music, winning first prize in the national Chopin and Weiniawski Competition in Townsville, Queensland.  In 1997, he was a prize winner of the 7th International Weiniawski and Lipinski Violin Competition for Young Violinists in Lublin, Poland and in 1998, the silver medal winner of the 2nd Novosibirsk International Violin Competition in Novosibirsk, Russia.  He is a former student of Ms. Charmian Gadd.

1999 was an important year for Chen Gu - he won the first Kendall National Violin Competition, the  Richard Goldner Scholarship, and the Dorcas McClean Scholarship of the Melbourne University in Australia. In 2000 he was a prize winner of the International Yehudi Menuhin Violin Competition in Folkestone, England.  He became a permanent member of the 1st violin section of Sydney Symphony Orchestra from 2001 and, in 2005, made his solo performance debut at an open air concert at Sydney Olympic Park.  After being invited to play as a Guest Concertmaster with the Macau Philharmonic Orchestra in the performance of the Madame Butterfly for the opening concert of the 2005 Macau International Music Festival, he returned in 2006, the 20th anniversary of the festival, to play as Leader for the performance of Mahler's 8th Symphony, the highlight of the celebration. He plays a 1766 J.B. Guadagnini violin and a 1999 Caldersmith violin.
In 2007 Chen Gu, winner of the 1st Kendall Competition, returned to the Macau Philharmonic Orchestra as Concertmaster. 

In a coincidence that delighted committee members, Jiajing Wang, winner of the 10th Competition, joined the same orchestra as Assistant Concert Master earlier this year.  

Miwako Abe

Miwako Abe’s distinguished career began when she started playing the violin at the age of five. After her study at the prestigious Toho Gakuen School of Music in Tokyo where she studied violin with Toshiya Eto and Hideo Saito, she became a prize-winning graduate of the Guildhall School of Music in London. Her teachers at the Guildhall School of Music include world-renowned artists such as Yfrah Neaman and William Pleeth. Here her selection for the BBC Television masterclass with Yehudi Menuhin was a tribute to her youthful mastery of the violin, which received further recognition by the award of the prestigious Boise Foundation Scholarship from London. This brought her to complete her studies at the Salzburg Mozarteum, where she became assistant to the celebrated violinist-conductor Sandor Végh. Her London debut recital at the Wigmore Hall received high praise from critics in The Times and The Daily Telegraph.

Ms Abe has given numerous performances as soloist and in chamber music ensembles, steadily enhancing her reputation across five continents as an exceptionally gifted artist. In England she played with the world-famous Academy of St. Martin-in -the Fields and with the English Chamber Orchestra, and she has performed as a concerto soloist with orchestras as well as in chamber music in Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, Poland, the Czech Republic, Japan, Israel, Jordan, Taiwan, Turkey, India, New Zealand, and the United States. She performed in many international festivals including the Salzburg Festival, Festival de Otonio, the Ankara Festival, the Adelaide International Festival, the Perth International Festival, and Melbourne International Festival.

Since coming to Australia in 1982, Miwako Abe has performed with major orchestras and ensembles, among them the Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide Symphony Orchestras, the Sydney String Quartet, the Australia Ensemble, the Australian Chamber Soloists, Flederman, Pipeline, and Soloists of Australia. As a member of the colourful Austral Trio-violin, flute, and guitar-Miwako Abe took part in numerous tours sponsored by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs, and Musica Viva, both within Australia and overseas.

A frequent performer on ABC Classic FM, as well as on overseas networks, Miwako Abe has worked live on air, in recordings, and in recitals with many distinguished associate artists, such as Ian Munro, Stephen McIntyre, Frank Wibaut, Roy Howat, and Michael Kieran Harvey. Her most recent CD recording of the selected American contemporary compositions for the New York-based American record label, New World Records received critical acclaim from Gramophone magazine.  New compositions for violin were written and dedicated to her by prominent Australian composers including Larry Sitsky, Nigel Westlake, Wendy Hiscocks, Laurence Whiffin, Julian Yu, and Mark Pollard.

Ms Abe is regarded as an outstanding performer as well as a highly successful teacher of the violin.  She is currently Associate Professor of Music and Head of the String Department at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. Many of her students have been successful in becoming prominent professional musicians, actively performing in Europe, the United States, and in Australia. Her reputation continues to bring invitations to give recitals and masterclasses at universities and conservatoria in Australia and overseas including the Royal Academy of Music in London, the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, the Mozarteum in Salzburg as well as the Australian National Academy of Music.

Donald Hazelwood AO
CONCERTMASTER EMERITUS, SYDNEY SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

Donald Hazelwood, Sydney Symphony Orchestra concertmaster since 1965 & co‑concertmaster from 1988 until his retirement in I998,  has enjoyed a long and successful career at the forefront of Australian classical music.  He first played in the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in 1952.

An active performer of both symphonic and chamber music, Donald Hazelwood represented Australia at 1974 Expo in Spokane, Washington, where he performed Tchaikowsky’s Violin Concerto in D with the Spokane Symphony Orchestra. He was one of two Australian musicians chosen to participate in the performance of the World Philharmonic Orchestra in Stockholm in 1985.

During the Sydney Symphony's 1974 European tour Donald Hazelwood’s performances of Richard Strauss's Ein Heldenleben solo were lauded and his repeat performances of this work were highly praised in the Symphony's 1986, 1989 and 1991 seasons.

He has been soloist with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation orchestras on many occasions.   His appearances include Barry Conyngham's work Ice Carving for Violin Solo and Strings, Peter Sculthorpe's Irkanda IV (released on CD), both the Elgar and the Bruch G Minor Concertos and solo appearances at Under the Stars in 1992 and 1995. In 1997 he performed Dvorak's Romance with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra Orchestra at his tribute concert in the Sydney Opera House.

Donald Hazelwood has worked with many of the leading conductors of our day: Sir Charles Mackerras, Mark Elder, Yan Pascal Tortelier and Christopher Hogwood, to name but a few.

His collaborations include performances in 1990 of Bach's Brandenburg concertos Nos. 4 & 5 with flautist James Galway; two world tours with his Austral String Quartet, four tours of Asia (the last in June 1997) with his Hazelwood Trio which included his wife, the late Anne Menzies, and pianist Rachel Valler, and regular Sydney performances with his Hazelwood String Quartet. He is a member of the Australian Trio which performs and records regularly.

During 1988‑89 Donald Hazelwood was Artistic Director of the National Emsemble based at the New South Wales Conservatorium of Music and was Director of Music for National Music Camp in 1989‑91 and again in 1996.  He is a life member of Youth Music Australia.

For his services to music, Donald Hazelwood was awarded an OBE in1976 and was made an Officer of the Order of Australia in 1988.

Patrick Wong

Patrick Wong moved to Sydney from Hong Kong in 1980.  He began learning violin at the age of 4 as a student of the Suzuki method with which he remained for over 10 years, studying mainly with Mr. Yasuki Nakamura.  In 1995 Patrick obtained an L.Mus.A and the following year was a finalist in the National Youth Concerto Competition in Brisbane, playing the Tchaikovsky concerto under the direction of John Curro.  He won the Kendall National Violin Competition in 2000, the same year he graduated from a combined Bachelor of Science / Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of New South Wales. 

In 2002 after two years of work in the IT industry he decided to do a Masters of Performance at the Sydney Conservatorium with Goetz Richter, and following graduation in 2005 successfully auditioned for a permanent position with the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra.  In July 2008 Patrick was a concertmaster at the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, Japan.