Julia Hwang

South Korean violinist Julia Hwang turned 21 in 2017, by which time she was already a veteran of the concert stage and even the recording studio. Hwang was born in South Korea in January of 1996 and took up the violin at age six. The following year, a meeting with Richard Crabtree, professor of violin and viola at London's Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music & Dance, set her on a course toward serious violin studies. Hwang enrolled at Trinity and passed her grade 8 exams with a top score of 96-percent, winning raves from examiners. That year, aged nine, she made her debut with the English National Baroque Orchestra, performing a Bach concerto, and she won the Classic FM radio network's Two Moons Competition the following year. Hwang gave her formal recital debut in February of 2008 at St. George's Hall in Bristol, earning three standing ovations and a rave review in the Bristol Evening Post. After winning several more prizes that year, Hwang enrolled at Clifton College on an academic and music scholarship. At 12, she performed with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. A natural on television, Hwang appeared in a BBC4 documentary on Ralph Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending; her performance of the work was featured on the program. Hwang made several high-profile charity appearances as a teen, including those at the Violins for Hope festival in Charlotte, North Carolina (along with Shlomo Mintz), and at an event for the Prince's Trust, with cellist Julian Lloyd Webber. Hwang made recordings as early as 2007, but her major-label debut came in 2017 on Signum with the recital Subito, featuring The Lark Ascending (in the violin-and-piano version) as well as works by Grieg, Lutoslawski, and the technically challenging Wieniawski. Hwang enrolled at St. John's College, Cambridge, and at the Royal College of Music, London, where she has studied with Itzhak Rashkovsky. She plays a 1698 Guarneri instrument on extended loan.
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