Singapore’s teenage violin prodigy Chloe Chua nabs No. 4 spot on UK’s classical music chart
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Singaporean violinist Chloe Chua (left) performing with Singapore Symphony Orchestra principal cellist Ng Pei-Sian at the Esplanade Concert Hall on July 25.
PHOTO: CHRIS P. LIM
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SINGAPORE – Singaporean violinist Chloe Chua’s new album Butterfly Lovers & Paganini has nabbed the No. 4 spot on the United Kingdom’s classical music chart.
The 17-year-old classical music prodigy’s new album presents a recording that combines Chinese composers Chen Gang and He Zhanhao’s Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto with Italian composer Niccolo Paganini’s First Violin Concerto. It is performed together with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra (SSO) and conductors Rodolfo Barraez and Mario Venzago.
Aside from these two pieces, the album also features Chen’s composition Sunshine Over Tashkurgan. All three pieces were recorded in 2023.
Chua’s album, released on July 26, marks the highest chart position for SSO on the Official Specialist Classical Chart, which is based on sales of digital bundles, CDs, vinyl and other formats, across a seven-day period. It is also the first SSO entry on the chart to feature a Singaporean soloist.
In an interview with classical music media outfit The Violin Channel, Chua says of the album: “Both the Paganini Violin Concerto No. 1 and Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto have virtuosic yet lyrical characteristics. The latter was adapted from the traditional Chinese opera, and the former also sounds almost like an Italian opera aria at times.”
SSO marked its previous highest entry on the chart in 2023, with its recording of film composer Bernard Herrmann’s Suite From Wuthering Heights: Echoes For Strings, which debuted at No. 5.
SSO’s previous recordings also made the chart – Shostakovich entered at No. 11 in 2022 and Russian Spectacular at No. 26 in 2021.
The Singapore Chinese Orchestra’s (SCO) Butterfly Lovers, recorded with American violinist Joshua Bell in Singapore in 2018 when he was in town for performances with the orchestra, was No. 16 on the charts in 2023, making it the first Chinese orchestra to break into the chart’s Top 20.
Chua shot to international fame at the age of 11 when she won the prestigious Yehudi Menuhin International Competition for Young Violinists, and has performed and competed around the world since.
She recently served as artist-in-residence of the SSO during its 2022/23 and 2023/24 seasons, making her the youngest to be appointed to the role.
She will attend the German university of music Hanns Eisler Berlin in October, and will join the SSO on its Australian tour from February to March 2025, during which she will perform with SSO’s principal cellist Ng Pei-Sian.
