Sue-Ying Koang
Violin
Sue-Ying Koang studied violin at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Lyon, the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler Berlin and the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, MA (USA), as well as Baroque violin and music education at the Geneva University of Music. From 2004 to 2011 she was section leader in the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège. (B).
Since 2012 Sue-Ying has devoted herself to the Baroque and Classical repertoire and has performed with famous ensembles such as La Fenice, Les Arts Florissants, Pygmalion and Cappella Mediterranea in renowned concert halls and at festivals: the Musikverein and Staatsoper in Vienna, La Scala Milan, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Teatro Colón Buenos Aires, the Barbican Centre London, the Festival d'Ambronay and the Salzburg Festival. In 2012 she was also artist in residence at the Banff Centre (Canada).
For some years she has worked in particular with the harpsichordist, organist, conductor and musicologist Vincent Bernhardt. Their first album “Dalla biblioteca di Vivaldi?” (Calliope, 2021) contains anonymous sonatas for violin and basso continuo from the early 18th century, including one which Vincent Bernhardt attributes to Antonio Vivaldi, collected in a manuscript probably copied by Johann Georg Pisendel in 1716/1717. The second album, “Travelling with a violin” (Calliope, 2023), is devoted to manuscript sonatas for violin and basso continuo by Giuseppe Torelli found in various libraries across Europe. Their interest in Torelli led Sue-Ying and Vincent to take part in the international conference on Giuseppe Torelli in Bologna in September 2023, where they were invited to give a paper on “Torelli’s Perfidia: a small genre, a great influence”.
The collaboration between Vincent and Sue-Ying, as conductor and leader respectively, also extends to the ensemble La Chapelle Saint-Marc in Luxembourg, with which she has released an album of German cantatas from Buxtehude’s time and an album of manuscript trio sonatas by Torelli.
Sue-Ying taught chamber music from 2005 to 2011 at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Liège. Since 2016 she has taught orchestral projects in the Baroque and Classical repertoire at the HEMU – Haute École de Musique in Lausanne. In 2021 she gave series of lecture-recitals at the Université populaire de Lausanne, and since 2022 she has taught “Historical performance practice for string instruments” at the HEMU Valais-Wallis.
Calliope Indésens has released the world-premiere recording of works for violin without bass by Johan Helmich Roman (1694-1758).
Sue-Ying plays on instruments maintained by the luthier Luc Breton and has studied with esteemed teachers such as Zoria Schikhmurzaeva, Pavel Vernikov, Michel Schwalbé, Malcolm Lowe and Alessandro Moccia. She has held scholarships from the Fulbright Program of the Franco-American Commission, the Lavoisier Program of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Mécénat Musical Société Générale.
