Radhika de Saram
Radhika de Saram was born in Sri Lanka. She commenced violin and piano studies at the Primary Department of the Royal Academy of Music when she was six years old and went on to the Junior Department as a Scholar where she studied violin with Igor Petrushevsky and also took lessons in Piano and Recorder. She was the leader of the String Sinfonia and then the highly selective Chamber Orchestra. She also held the Helmore Music Scholarship at Mill Hill School in London and then went on to Wells Cathedral School as a Specialist Music Scholar.
She has a keen interest in chamber music and has participated in many residential chamber music courses, including Pro Corda and Music Works. She played in the Willow quartet for years, performing at various venues and festivals including Peasmarsh. She then went on to be the second violinist in the Ligeti Quartet until 2010 when she started her undergraduate degree programme in Modern Languages at University College London.
Since completing her BA last year, she re-commenced her violin studies with Klara Fleider in Vienna and continues freelancing in London. Recently she has performed as part of the Chineke! Orchestra tour in UK and Europe, including a concert this month at the Royal Festival Hall. She also plays regularly with the London Contemporary Orchestra, the English Festival Orchestra and the Musica Poetica baroque ensemble, and has performed as a soloist with the Sri Lankan Symphony Orchestra in Colombo.
http://www.chineke.org/radhika-de-saram
Radhika played the Harrison-Frank Family Foundation’s Pietro Pallotta violin in 2016 – 2019.
‘Just to say thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to play on the beautiful violin lent to me by your foundation -I will be sad to be parting with it! I suppose an instrument becomes your voice in this profession and I definitely became quite attached to its beautiful tone. It has made a world of difference to help my playing and to start my career on a confident note! I know many of the musicians borrowing instruments of your trust share the same gratitude – It is such a positive thing to know that there are people like you who are generously offering to support musicians in this way. For me it would have been impossible financially to acquire an instrument of this quality after graduating and I feel very fortunate to have had this chance. I hope the foundation continues to be as beneficial as it was to me for future generations of young musicians.’
Radhika de Saram, April 2019