Tatjana Vassiljeva

Novosibirsk gave Tatjana Vassiljeva her first cello lesson at six — she was born there in 1977 — and she studied with Eugenij Nilov, then at the Central Music School in Moscow with Maria Zhuravleva, with Walter Nothas in Munich from 1994, and as a postgraduate with David Geringas in Berlin. The prizes began in her teens and kept coming: the Tchaikovsky youth competition in 1992, the ARD in Munich in 1994, the Adam in 1999, the Casals in 2000, the Izuminomori in 2001, and in Paris that same year the Grand Prix of the Rostropovich Competition. The Victoires de la Musique Classique named her international discovery of 2005. She has played with the London Symphony, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Orchestre de Paris, the Tonhalle Zurich, the NHK Symphony, the Tokyo Philharmonic, the Mariinsky Orchestra and the Russian National Philharmonic, under Abbado, Gergiev, Eschenbach, Temirkanov, Zinman, Spivakov and Penderecki, whose revised Largo and Second Cello Concerto she has taken up; her recordings for Naxos, Mirare, Pentatone and Accord have brought the Diapason d'Or and the Choc de Classica. She was among the founders of the Berlin Philharmonic String Quintet in 2007. Since August 2014 she has held the principal cello chair of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and since 2023 a professorship at the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe.