Mario Hossen

Eight years old at his first appearance as soloist with an orchestra, Hossen came out of Plovdiv — piano at five, violin at six with Atanas Batchvarov, then the Dobrin Petkov music school in Darina Dankova's class — and moved to Vienna in 1991, taking his diploma at the University of Music and Performing Arts with Michael Frischenschlager in 1997. Ruggiero Ricci and Gérard Poulet were among his later teachers, and the Alban Berg Foundation awarded him its prize. He directs the historical-critical edition of Paganini’s works for solo violin and for violin and orchestra published by Doblinger, founded the Paganini Ensemble Vienna in 2019, and has recorded the concertos alongside those of Bruch, Mendelssohn and Brahms. He plays a Guadagnini of 1749 on loan from the Austrian National Bank, teaches at New Bulgarian University, and has sat on the juries of the Heifetz, Kreisler and Tibor Varga competitions. His Music Minus One recordings were made with the Plovdiv Philharmonic under Nayden Todorov. Hossen appeared as a violin soloist at the Thracia Summer Music Festival in Plovdiv in 1997, 1998, 2000 and 2001. He took Austrian citizenship, and his Paganini work has brought him honorary membership of the Paganini Association in Genoa and, in 2024, the naming of his Paganini Ensemble as an ambassador of the European Paganini Route as part of the city of Genoa’s European cultural initiative. He has given first performances of unpublished music by Paganini, Rolla, Mercadante, Mozart and Tartini, recording several of them for Dynamic. In Vienna he founded the Orpheus International Academy and Music Festival and directs the Concert Spirituel series with the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, and since 2019 he has been artistic director of the Varna Summer International Music Festival.