Year 12 student Teresa Yang was announced as the overall winner the Ku-ring-gai Philharmonic Orchestra’s Secondary Schools Concerto Competition.
There were three stages to competition, beginning with auditions. Teresa progressed from auditions to perform at the semi-finals recital, where she was selected by adjudicators as a finalist.
At the Finals Concert held at Chatswood’s Concourse Concert Hall, Teresa performed the first movement of Béla Bartók’s Violin Concerto No. 2, accompanied by the Ku-ring-gai Philharmonic Orchestra (KPO).
Her outstanding performance saw her named the overall winner of the competition, receiving $5,000 in prize money and an engagement to perform with KPO in 2025.
Teresa was also awarded the inaugural Emily Sun Violin Prize. This entitles her to the loan of Professor Emily Sun’s 1946 A. E. Smith violin from her private collection for up to three years, to support Teresa’s emerging career as a professional violinist.
She was also awarded the KPO Award, receiving $500 in prize money after being voted by the orchestra as the best performer during rehearsals.
The prestigious classical music competition was conceived in 1984 to reward local music students, who were in secondary school and taking their music seriously, by providing them with the opportunity to play a concerto with an orchestra. The competition has since expanded to include entrants from across NSW and the ACT.
