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Presented by the Leisure and Cultural Services Department, Violin Recital by Leung Kin-fung will be staged in mid-September to bring you many notable and everlasting melodies.

Leung and pianist Cheng Wai are going to share with music lovers their special selections including works by Stravinsky, Beethoven, Shostakovich, Ysaye and Hubay.

Leung, now using the violin made by Joannes Gagliano in 1801 in Italy, was the first-prize winner of the 1992 Young Artist Competition in New York and obtained the second prize in the 19th William Primrose International Viola Competition in 1991. Thus, he became the first musician from Hong Kong to have achieved these two distinctions.

Leung began studying the violin at the age of five and gave his first public performance at eight. He received his Bachelor and Master degrees of Music from the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied with Albert Markov and Emanuel Vardi. In 1992, winning the Irving Ruckens Award, he studied at the Juilliard School as a full scholarship student with Dorothy DeLay and Karen Tuttle.

Leung has a very active performing career and has collaborated with many orchestras and given solo recitals in New York, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and mainland China. He also recorded the Violin Concerto by the renowned Chinese composer Nai Zhong Guan with the Kaohsiung City Chinese Orchestra. He is now acting as the first associate concertmaster for the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra.

Cheng Wai has finished her doctoral degree in musical arts from the State University of New York, where she was a student of Professor Gilbert Kalish. She has been winners in numerous competitions, including the first prize in the New York Olga Koussevitsky Piano Competition, the Asian Region Selection Competition for the Gina-Bachauer International Competition, etc. She has performed in New York, Washington DC, Philadelphia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Long Island, Denmark and Hong Kong. She is now teaching at The Chinese University of Hong Kong and The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts.

The performance will be staged at 8 pm on Wednesday (September 19) at Theatre, Hong Kong City Hall. Tickets priced at $110 and $70 are now available at all URBTIX outlets. Half-price concessions will be granted to full-time students, senior citizens, people with disabilities and Comprehensive Social Security Assistance (CSSA) recipients. Limited tickets for students and CSSA recipients are available on a first-come, first-served basis.

For programme details, please call 2734 2935; for reservations and ticketing enquiries, please call 2734 9009.

End/Tuesday, August 21, 2001

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