Closing Concert of the International Violin Master Classes with Prof. Christel Lee & Dmitry Sitkovetsky

Canadian-American violinist Christel Lee won first prize at the International Jean Sibelius Violin Competition in Helsinki in 2015, becoming the first North American winner in the competition’s fifty-year history. In December of that same year, she was invited to perform with the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Principal Conductor John Storgårds, on a tour to Birmingham and Dublin, which celebrated the 150th anniversary of Jean Sibelius’s birth.

Her success in Helsinki was preceded by numerous awards, including second prize and the Audience Prize at the 2013 ARD International Competition in Munich. Her interpretations have been highly praised by critics for their intensity, technical precision, and emotional depth.

As a soloist, Christel Lee has performed with renowned orchestras such as the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Korean Symphony Orchestra, the KBS Symphony Orchestra, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, the Tokyo Philharmonic, and the SWR Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart. In addition to her solo career, she is a passionate chamber musician and regularly collaborates with leading artists of her generation. She is regularly invited to festivals in Europe, Asia, and North America.

Among her recent highlights is the world premiere of the newly commissioned double concerto for violin and cello by Finnish composer Kalevi Aho, which was written for her and cellist Jonathan Roozeman. Christel Lee, whose family has Korean roots, was born in Bloomington and began playing the violin at the age of five in Vancouver, Canada. She later moved to New York City, attended the Professional Children’s School, and graduated from The Juilliard School in 2011. She then continued her studies at the Kronberg Academy and at the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich under Ana Chumachenco.

In addition to her work as a musician, Lee is deeply committed to music education and the promotion of young talent. Since 2024, she has been a professor of violin at the Karlsruhe University of Music. She plays a violin by Carlo Ferdinando Landolfi from 1770, which has been generously made available to her from a private collection.

Dmitry Sitkovetsky was born in Baku, Azerbaijan, but initially grew up in Moscow. He studied at the conservatory there, emigrated to the U.S. in 1977, and continued his education at the Juilliard School in New York. Since 1987, he has lived in London with his wife Susan and their daughter Julia. Sitkovetsky belongs to that rare breed of artists who have achieved success in many fields.

As a violinist, he collaborates with the world’s finest orchestras. He has also performed at the Salzburg Festival as well as at the festivals in Lucerne, Edinburgh, Verbier, and Istanbul, as well as at the George Enescu Festival; he is also one of the founders of the Tuscan Sun Festival, established in 2003. In recent years, Sitkovetsky has also built a flourishing career as a conductor. Since 2003, he has served as Music Director of the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra.

In March 2006, he became Artist-in-Residence with the Spanish Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León. He is also the founding director of the chamber orchestra New European Strings (NES). Since Dmitry Sitkovetsky released a successful arrangement of Bach’s Goldberg Variations for string trio twenty years ago, further arrangements of works by Haydn, Beethoven, Brahms, Dohnányi, Bartók, Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, and Schnittke—mostly for string orchestra. Dmitri Sitkovetsky is an active, versatile recording artist with an extensive discography that showcases him performing all the major violin concertos and numerous chamber music works, as well as conducting various orchestral works.

The CDs released in recent years reflect Sitkovetsky’s growing engagement with contemporary composers. He has premiered the violin concertos composed for him by John Casken (1995) and Krzystof Meyer (2000), and he frequently performs music by Dutilleux, Penderecki, Schnittke, Part, Vasks, and Shchedrin, who has written several works for the violinist and conductor Sitkovetsky.