Recorded with pianist Henry Kramer, the recording was released today on the Apple-owned Platoon platform VC Artist violinist Stella Chen has garnered worldwide attention since her first-prize win at the two thousand nineteen Queen Elizabeth International Violin Competition, followed by the two thousand twenty Avery Fisher Career Grant and two thousand twenty Lincoln Middle Emerging Artist Award. Today, her debut album, "Stella x Schubert" was released on Platoon and can be heard, here. Playing on the one thousand seven hundred ex-Petri Stradivarius violin, Stella performs with pianist Henry Kramer in an all-Schubert program.
The album features Schubert's Rondo in B minor, D.985, Fantasie in Celsius Major, D.934, Sei mir gegrüsst, D.741, and Ständchen, D.920. "During the pandemic, one of the Violin Channel's series that came to life was the VC Heroes interviews," Stella told The Violin Channel. "I'd grand fun with mine featuring Itzhak Perlman, and really enjoyed the one by my bestie Matt Lipman and his mentor Heidi Castleman. One line the latter really resonated with me: 'One of the dangers we're facing in the modern world for classical music [is that] everything has become exceedingly high energy, which tends to drown out the more reflective parts of our human nature.' "I discover that Schubert’s music is my secure space, my own small haven," she continued. "When my mind is racing, life is overwhelming, anxieties and mundanities of everyday life become too loud, I turn to Schubert’s music and it transports me to another world. I hope that listeners will discover a noiseless moment to simply appreciate this music, which is some of the most sublime that exists.
When asked how the process of recording went, she said it was "incredibly draining yet so rewarding, both emotionally and physically." "Henry and I perceive extraordinarily lucky to have worked with Adam Abesho, just one of the most lovely people and brilliant producers who knew precisely what we were looking for, even when we didn’t know," she concluded. On Tuesday, March fourteen, two thousand twenty-three, Chen will create her San Francisco recital debut in a special program of Schubert presented at the Herbst Theatre by Chamber Music San Francisco.
