Our January 2026 cover star discusses the Stradivari violins she has played throughout her career
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This is an excerpt from The Strad January 2026 feature, ’Stella Chen: a bright future’. Read the full article here
When Stella Chen won the Queen Elisabeth Competition in 2019, she was loaned the 1708 ‘Huggins’ Stradivari, formerly owned by the English astronomer William Huggins. Since 1997, this violin has been loaned to each Queen Elisabeth Competition first prize winner for four years after their win, until the next violin edition comes round.
For Chen, it was a ‘cool piece of history to be part of… to think who has been holding that violin’. In the booklet notes to her new album, she describes the instrument’s sound as being ‘like a laser’. She writes about playing it for the Beethoven Concerto:
‘It has this purity of tone that I think especially suits the second movement and that gorgeous second theme.’ She was sad to say goodbye to the ‘Huggins’, but is happy to see it go to the competition’s next violin winner, Dmytro Udovychenko.
After a period of ‘floundering’, playing on a different violin every week, Chen was loaned another Stradivari by Dr Ryuji Ueno and Rare Violins of New York In Consortium. It’s known as the 1720 ‘General Kyd’, named after Alexander Kyd (d.1826), a British army officer who once owned it.
Coincidentally, another of Kyd’s Stradivari violins was played by Chen’s teacher Itzhak Perlman. ‘In terms of character, it’s a mix of the best qualities of a Strad and a “del Gesù”,’ she says.
‘I love playing the Barber on it because the G string has so much body but also incredible flexibility. It’s probably the closest thing to what I imagine my ideal human voice would be, and I feel very at home with it. It has a lot of soul.’
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