Concert May 23 and 24, 2026, 5:00 PM - violin and piano

The violin and piano duo of Sarah Bayens and Dimitri Malignan will perform in the Recital Hall of the Giardini La Mortella this coming weekend, May 23-24.

Violinist Sarah Bayens was born in 2000 in Belgium and studied with K. Rens and at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels with S. Laub. She continued her studies in Austria at the University of Music in Vienna with U. Wallin. In 2019, she won the prestigious Young Belgian Talent competition and was named Young Musician of the Year 2022 by the Belgian Music Press Association. The Royal Conservatory of Brussels has awarded her numerous prizes, including the Prix Maurice Lefranc and the Prix Colonel de Bisschop. She has performed as a soloist with prestigious orchestras: the ORFEO Chamber Orchestra, the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, and the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège. She has participated in masterclasses with internationally renowned violinists such as H. Hahn, P. Kopatchinskaja, L. Gatto, and others. A member of several chamber music groups, she founded the Susato Trio, part of the European Chamber Music Academy, with which she won first prize at the Génération Classique competition, the Supernova competition, and third prize at the Premio Trio di Trieste in Italy. She also served as concertmaster of the Flemish Youth Orchestra and in 2021 was admitted to the Orchestral Academies of the Belgian National Orchestra and the Royal Opera House of La Monnaie.

Dimitri Malignan, born in Paris in 1998, won the 2017 Prix Cortot at just 19, launching a distinguished career that has led him to win over twenty international competitions, notably 3rd Prize, the Audience Award, and the J.S. Bach at the Montreal International Music Competition, 3rd Prize at the Osaka International Music Competition, 2nd Prize at the American Protégé Competition in New York, 1st Prize at the Anton Garcia-Abril International Competition in Teruel, 1st Prize at the Mihail Jora Music Competition in Bucharest, 5th Prize at the Antoine de Saint-Exupéry International Competition in Saint-Priest. In 2020, he won a scholarship from the Yamaha Music Foundation of Europe, and in 2023 he won the Excellence Award at the Franco-Romanian Economic Summit in Paris. His musical education has been enriched by the teachings of prestigious maestros: J.P. Schumann, ... Sévilla, L. Berlinskaya at the École Normale de Musique "Alfred Cortot" in Paris, at the Amsterdam Conservatory with N. Grubert, and with B. Lupo at the Accademia Santa Cecilia in Rome, where he graduated in 2025 with top honors. He performs regularly in France and abroad on major stages: Paris, London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Rome, Brussels, Romania, Russia, Denmark, Monaco, Canada, and the United States, and is invited to prestigious festivals. He has recorded numerous CDs, including "Le Diable dans la Nuit" (Editions Hortus), a duo with violinist Sarah Bayens dedicated to the Dutch composer Henriëtte Bosmans.

The program that the Bayens-Malignan duo will present at La Mortella focuses primarily on music by composers who lived between the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century, and will also include a tribute to William Walton and Lady Walton on the centenary of their birth with a performance of Walton's Canzonetta for violin and piano. Composed in London along with the Scherzetto between 1948 and 1950, both pieces are dedicated to "Vivien and Larry," the great actors Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier, dear friends of the Waltons. The Canzonetta is a wonderful short composition whose melody harks back to an ancient lyric by the troubadours of the twelfth century.

Fondazione William Walton e La Mortella
Via Francesco Calise 45, 80075, Forio (NA)
tel.: 081-986220, 081-986237