Ziyu Shen

The Chinese violist Ziyu Shen was born in 1997 and first started playing the violin at the age of four. She switched to the viola at the age of twelve and started to study with Li Sheng at the Music Middle School affiliated to the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. She has taken part in masterclasses with Yuri Bashmet, Lars Anders Tomter, Antoine Tamestit, Roberto Diaz, Pinchas Zukerman and Gabor Takacs-Nagy.

Ziyu Shen has won first prize in a number of international major competitions. 2018 Ziyu Shen won the secon prize in the Tokyo International Viola Competition. In 2013 fifteen-year-old Ziyu Shen won first prize in the 11th Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition and was the youngest winner ever. In 2012 she also won first prizes in the Johansen International Competition in Washington DC and the Morningside Music Bridge Chamber Music Competition in Canada. Another first-prize was awarded her in the 2014 Young Concert Artists International Auditions in New York. 2017 she won second prize in the Johannes Brahms Competition.

Ziyu Shen has given successful viola recitals in venues such as London’s Wigmore Hall and Royal Festival Hall and the National Centre for the Performing Arts in China. She has also taken part in the Verbier Festival Academy, where she was awarded the Academy Prize for viola. As a soloist, she has worked with the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Moscow Soloists Chamber Orchestra, the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra in Canada, the Shenzhen and Qingdao Symphony Orchestras in China and the hr-symphony orchestra with Christoph Eschenbach.

From 2015 until summer of 2021 Ziyu Shen has been studying at Kronberg Academy with Nobuko Imai. These studies were funded by the Annika und Wolfgang Fink Scholarship.