Sundays at Noon (Mathieu van Bellen, Tadashi Imai)

Mathieu van Bellen was born in 1988 and started playing the violin at the age of four. In 2000 he was invited to study at the Conservatory in Amsterdam. >From September 2002 he studied at Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester (UK) with Professor Jan Repko, and currently studies at the Royal College of Music in London with Professor Itzhak Rashkovsky. He has taken part in several competitions and was a prize winner in all. In 2008 he won the Royal College of Music String Player of the Year Competition. He has given concerts in The Netherlands, Belgium, England, Poland, USA, Denmark, Japan, Greece and Belarus, and in May 2007 made his debut at the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam. Mathieu has appeared in television and radio programmes in Holland and in Belgium and has performed as soloist with several orchestras.

Tadashi Imai began his piano studies in Japan. After winning major competitions he was granted a scholarship to study at the Texas Christian University with Tamas Ungar. He won further prizes in the USA including First Prize at the Grand Prix International Chopin Competition. He went on to receive a scholarship to study at the Royal Academy of Music, London. After graduating from the Royal Academy of Music he was a Junior Fellow of the Academy for four years. He has performed as soloist with many orchestras including the Royal Academy Orchestra, the Osaka Symphony and the Feuerwerk Symphoniker, Tokyo. In 2008, he was appointed Associate of the Royal Academy of Music and was official accompanist at the Menuhin International Violin Competition, and will be official accompanist at the Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition in 2010. His forthcoming concert engagements include solo recital and chamber music concerts in Japan, England, France, Spain, Holland, Poland and Germany.