Overview
Biography
Remarked by Yehudi Menuhin at an early age, Zhi-Jong Wang is considered one of the most promising violinists of her generation and receiving increasing international attention.
Zhi-Jong’s recent accomplishments include a tour with Warsaw Philharmonic under Maestros Yoel Levi and Antoni Wit; her debut recital at the Lucerne Festival and a tour with the Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire under Pascal Rophé. Engagements in 2013/14 have also taken her to Japan where she gave highly acclaimed performances with the Osaka Century Orchestra and with the NHK Symphony Orchestra under Tadaaki Otaka, and earlier in the season she gave concerts in Hanoi for the first time.
As well as performing the standard violin repertoire, Zhi-Jong is a passionate exponent of contemporary music, performing works by Gubaidulina, Weil, Lutoslawski, Schnittke, Ligeti, Schönberg, etc. Forth-coming premieres in the 2013/14 season include Ana Sokolovic’s Commedia dell'arte III and Nikolai Badinski’s Violin Concerto No.2.
Following her first concert leading the orchestra from the violin with Ensemble Orchestral de Paris performing Mozart’s Violin Concerto no. 5 at the Cité de la Musique in Paris, ‘play-conducting’ has attracted Zhi-Jong’s interest and in recent seasons she has played/conducted Vivaldi/Piazzolla’s Four Seasons and several of the Mozart concerti.
Zhi-Jong is the laureate of several important competitions beginning with First Prize in the 1998 Yehudi Menuhin International Competition for Young Violinists - the last competition held by Sir Menuhin himself and following which he invited her to perform with him. In the same year, she also won the First Prize of the China National Violin Competition, where she was the youngest first prize winner ever in this competition. In the following years Zhi-Jong Wang has distinguished herself receiving the First Prize and three special prizes including “the Youngest Finalist” at the 22nd Lipizer International Violin Competition. Her achievements have attracted world-wide attention, in 2006 the China edition of Gramophone magazine featured her in a full-page report, and musical critics acclaimed her as “a rare new star in Asia”.
Zhi-Jong appears as a soloist with various orchestras, including Orchestre national de Radio France, Orchestre national de Lille, St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, Turku Symphony Orchestra, Konzerthausorcheser Berlin, China National Symphony Orchestra, Shanghai Symphony orchestras amongst others. She collaborates with musicians such as Yuri Temirkanov, Gidon Kremer, Lynn Harrel (Chamber Music Connects the World), Matthias Bamert, Okko Kamu, John Storgårds, Christian Arming, Muhai Tang, Jia Lu, etc.
Zhi-Jong has studied at Shanghai Conservatory of Music with the famous Chinese violinist Professor Lina Yu. Afterwards, she studied with Kolja Blacher at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg and Hochschule für Musik “Hanns Eisler” Berlin, where she also worked as Professor Blacher’s assistant. She graduated in 2011 with “Konzertexamen”. Zhi-Jong is currently Associate Professor at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music.
