Patricia Kopatchinskaja

Patricia Kopatchinskaja was born in Chișinău in 1977 to two professional musicians — her mother a violinist, her father a cimbalom player, both with Moldova's state folk ensemble — and something of that inheritance of playing by ear, and for people, has never left her. She entered the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna at seventeen, studying composition as well as violin, and completed her training in Bern with Igor Ozim; first prize at the Szeryng competition in Mexico followed in 2000. Her repertoire runs from the Baroque through the Classical literature to Schoenberg, Ligeti, Kurtág and a long list of living composers who have written for her, and she has made a practice of building whole evenings as arguments rather than recitals — Bye Bye Beethoven, Dies Irae, Death and the Maiden, the last of these recorded with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and awarded a Grammy in 2018. She has been an artistic partner of that orchestra since 2014 and works in the same capacity with Camerata Bern. The Royal Philharmonic Society gave her its Music Award in 2014, and she took the Grand Prix of the Swiss Music Awards in 2017. Kopachinskaja appeared as a violin soloist at the Thracia Summer Music Festival in Plovdiv in 1997. Her composition teacher in Vienna was Iván Eröd. Esa-Pekka Salonen, Márton Illés and Fazıl Say are among the composers she has worked with, Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire among the pieces that let her use speech and stage as well as the instrument, and she has recorded chamber programmes with Sol Gabetta and Joonas Ahonen.