Beethoven: Fruhlingssonate fur Flote

Qiling Chen was born into a family of musicians in Guangzhou in China. She was nine when she started to study the flute at the Xinghai Conservatory in Guangzhou. By the age of sixteen she had already won the second prize in her country’s National Flute Competition and enrolled at Beijing’s Central Conservatory of Music. In 1989 she transferred to the Zurich Conservatory of Music, where her teachers included Aurèle Nicolet, Alexandre Magnin and Günter Rumpel. She graduated summa cum laude with diplomas in solo, orchestral and concert work. Among the various prizes that Qiling Chen has won at international competitions, suffice it to mention a first prize at the 1991 Concours National d'Exécution Musicale pour la Jeunesse in Riddes in Switzerland, a second prize at the 1992 International Flute Competition at Szeged in Hungary and a first prize at the 1996 Kiwanis Chamber Music Competition in Zurich, Switzerland. Released in 1992, her first solo album included flute concertos by Bach, Viv