Wen Qian

Ms. Qian has a wide range of expertise in teaching violin, including orchestra audition preparation, technique, solo repertoire, performance psychology, musical style development, chamber music, practice efficiency, and more. Wen will pinpoint your problems and make playing the violin easy for you! Her students' age ranges from 8 (with some beginner's training) to adults.  Start your violin learning in the correct way, it will save your time in a long run!

Ms. Qian has been a first violinist with the Metropolitan Orchestra since 1997, where she has served as Acting Assistant Concertmaster for numerous years. As an educator, she has served on the College Division Faculty at Mannes School of Music since 2000.  Ms. Qian was hailed by China Daily as “one of China’s most promising young violinists." She was featured in The Strad magazine in a review titled “Rare Thrill” after her 2004 Carnegie Hall recital. Music critic Dennis Rooney commented “...it was performed with enough insight and panache to thrill a listener while at the same time raising the question of why such results are so rarely achieved." 

Ms. Qian has enjoyed an active career as a soloist, chamber musician and educator throughout China, America and Europe. In 1994, Ms. Wen Qian served as Concertmaster at the Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra under conductor Valery Gergiev. Her solos in “Scheherezade” brought her critical acclaim, with the German newspaper “Kieler Nachrichten” featuring Wen Qian on the front page. Over the years she has been invited to be a guest concertmaster with the Philharmonia of the Nation, Germany, Jupiter Symphony of New York, Hong Kong Sinfonietta, Tianjin Symphony Orchestra and Shenzhen Symphony.

As a chamber musician, she has performed in music festivals and concert series including the Marlboro, Tanglewood, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, among others. She has collaborated with numerous world renowned musicians including Andras Schiff, Mitsuko Uchida, Leslie Parnas, Nobuko Imai, and members of the Beaux Arts Trio, Guarneri Quartet and Juilliard Quartet.


Now a Violin Professor at Mannes College of Music at the New School University, the demands for her Ms. Qian's teaching have included Master Classes and coachings at the New World Symphony in Miami, New York Youth Symphony, NYU, the Central Conservatory of Beijing, Shanghai Conservatory, and various music schools in Taiwan. Ms.Qian teaches a Violin Class at Mannes that focuses on Orchestra Auditions, and some graduates of her class have won jobs at the MET Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, Houston Symphony, Detroit Symphony and New Orleans Symphony. In recent summers, Ms. Qian performed and coached at the Talis Music Festival in Switzerland, and Cadenza Festival in Beijing, China, and she was an artist in residence at the NYO China, coaching the top young musicians in China in 2019.

Ms. Qian is a native of Beijing, China where she started studying violin at age 7 with her uncle. She later studied with Felix Galimir, Ruggerio Ricci, William Lincer, Helen Kwalwasser and Chen Yuzhu.