Julia Fischer (born 15 June 1983) is a German classical violinist, violist, and pianist.Violinist Julia Fischer Voted Artist of the Year, article by Tom Huizenga, site of the NPR, 4 October 2007.Biography of Julia Fischer, site of Pentatone Music.Violinists of the century, selected and edited by music expert Harald Eggebrecht for the Sueddeutsche Zeitung Edition, 2006, catalogue of the ZVAB.Julia Fischer Violin & Piano CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS Violin Concerto No. 3 EDVARD GRIEG Piano Concerto Julia Fischer Junge Deutsche Philharmonie Matthias Pintscher, DVD release 2 August 2010, site of the Deutsche Grammophon, review: "Julia Fischer's Double-barreled DVD Debut: First Rank Violinist, First Rank Pianist, First Rank Fischer". She teaches at the University of Music and Theatre Munich and performs up to 60 times per year.
Biography Julia Fischer is of German–Slovak ancestry. Her parents met as students in Prague.Article by Laurence Vittes featured in Strings magazine, May 2006, No. 139. Her mother is Viera Fischer (née Krenková). Her father, Frank-Michael Fischer, a mathematician from East Germany, also moved from Eastern Saxony to West Germany in 1972. In addition to German, Fischer is also fluent in English and French.
Fischer started playing the violin before her fourth birthday and received her first lesson from Helge Thelen. A few months later, she began taking piano lessons from her mother. Fischer once said, "My mother is a pianist and I wanted to play the piano as well, but since my elder brother also played the piano, I thought it would be nice to learn another instrument. I agreed to try out the violin and stayed with it."What's On in London, 20 April 2005 Fischer also supports her mother's belief that musical education of any kind should include piano fundamentals to extend one's repertoire and knowledge of harmony, theory, and style.Violinist Fischer juggles balance, discipline, article by Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle, 3 June 2009.
At the age of eight, she began her formal violin education at the Leopold Mozart Conservatory in Augsburg, under the tutelage of Lydia Dubrowskaya. When she was nine years old, she was admitted to the University of Music and Theatre Munich, where she worked with Ana Chumachenco.
When she was twelve years old she played Beethoven's Violin Concerto for the first time in her mother's home town in East Slovakia, and later played it again with Yehudi Menuhin in Vienna. Beethoven was also her mother's and brother's favourite composer. Fischer's parents divorced when she was thirteen."Ich muss nicht sterben, um das zu spielen" (tr. I don't have to die to play this) Interview with Julia Fischer in the FAZ from 29 February 2008 . As a teenager she was inspired by Glenn Gould, Evgeny Kissin, and Maxim Vengerov."Man darf nicht spielen, um bewundert zu werden", (tr. Man darf nicht spielen, um bewundert zu werden) article in Die Welt from 19 January 2009 .
Competitions Two competitions defined Fischer's early career as a professional violinist. The most prestigious competition Fischer won was the 1995 International Yehudi Menuhin Violin Competition, which took place in Folkestone under the supervision of Yehudi Menuhin.
Her performance earned her first prize in the junior categoryLaureates Archive, site of the Menuhin Competition. as well as all of the special prizes, including the Bach prize for the best solo performance of the composer's work.Violinist Julia Fischer talking to Hajo Schumacher on DW TV, 2013, 43:07 min.
Music journalist Edward Greenfield said, "I first heard Julia Fischer in 1995 as a 12-year-old in the Yehudi Menuhin Violin Competition. Not only did she win outright in the junior category, but she was manifestly more inspired than anyone in the senior category."Julia Fischer, violin, piano, biography on bach-cantatas.com.
Her teacher at the University of Music and Theatre Munich, Ana Chumachenco, kept Fischer down to earth by making her practise difficult pieces of Sarasate. In 1996, she won another major contest, the Eighth Eurovision Competition for Young Instrumentalists in Lisbon, which was broadcast in 22 countries.
Career Solo artist Fischer started her career early, although she attended school (the Gymnasium) up to the age of 19, learning mathematics and physics as well as music, and passed the Abitur in spring 2002.The Classic FM Q&A: violinist Julia Fischer, interview on Classic FM with Julia Fischer, 22 September 2015.Julia Fischer – Die Geige ist ihre beste Freundin, article by Martina Kausch, Welt am Sonntag, 29 December 2002 . She has been giving concerts since she was 11 and started teaching as a violin professor at 23.Star violinist Julia Fischer impresses at the piano, too, interview with Julia Fischer by Bjorn Woll, edited by Kyle James, Deutsche Welle, 22 August 2010
Fischer has worked with many internationally acclaimed conductors, such as Simon Rattle, Lorin Maazel, Christoph Eschenbach, Yakov Kreizberg, Yuri Temirkanov, Sir Neville Marriner, David Zinman, Zdeněk Mácal, Jun Märkl, Ruben Gazarian, Marek Janowski, Herbert Blomstedt, and Michael Tilson Thomas. She has also worked with a variety of top German, American, British, Polish, French, Italian, Swiss, Dutch, Norwegian, Russian, Japanese, Czech, and Slovak orchestras.
She has performed in most European countries, the United States, Brazil and Japan. Her concerts have been broadcast on TV and radio in every major European country and many have been featured on U.S., Japanese, and Australian radio stations.
Lorin Maazel as mentor Lorin Maazel, chief conductor of the Munich-based Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra from 1993 to 2002, was Fischer's mentor since 1997.Lorin Maazel, obituary by Julia Fischer, taz, 27 December 2014. He used to perform in a concert with Fischer at least once a year. Maazel made Fischer perform as a soloist with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra first at the Bad Kissingen festival and then, in March 2000, in Munich, where the competition was fierce.
Carnegie Hall debut 2003 was a pivotal year in Fischer's career, including her Carnegie Hall debut, when she received standing ovations for her performance of Brahms' Double Concerto with Lorin Maazel and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.Julia Fischer's Artist Biography by Robert Cummings, 2010.
In 2003 Fischer also performed for the first time with the Berlin Philharmonic under Lorin Maazel as well as with the London Symphony Orchestra. Despite the added complication of the programme change two weeks before the concert, from the Beethoven violin concerto to the Bartók violin concerto, which Fischer had never played before, she mastered it.
Following numerous performances in the U.S. over the previous six years, in 2003 Fischer also performed with the New York Philharmonic under the baton of Lorin Maazel, playing the Sibelius Violin Concerto in New York's Lincoln Center, as well as the Mendelssohn Violin concerto in Vail, Colorado.
She has toured with Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, Herbert Blomstedt and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the Dresden Philharmonic.
In 2006, Fischer was appointed as a professor at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts. She was Germany's youngest professor at the time. In fall of 2011, Fischer took over her former teacher Ana Chumachenco's chair at the University of Music and Theatre Munich.Julia Fischer wird Professorin an der Hochschule für Musik und Theater München, announcement of the Neue Musikzeitung, Regensburg, 8 November 2011 .
At the 2011 Salzburg Easter Festival, Fischer played the violin concerto of Alban Berg with Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic. In May 2013 she performed for the first time with the Vienna Philharmonic under Esa-Pekka Salonen, playing the violin concertos of Esa-Pekka Salonen and Ludwig van Beethoven.Profile Julia Fischer , site of the Berliner Festspiele .
At the Proms When Fischer played the Dvořák violin concerto with David Zinman and the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich at the BBC Proms on 21 July 2014, the concerto was recorded and received excellent reviews:"Julia Fischer turns in a splendid account of the Dvořák violin concerto. She plays with her usual fine sense for judicious tempos, a wide range of imaginatively applied dynamics, beautiful intonation, and spectacular technique. She is very poetic in the lovely second movement and in the outer panels she plays with a true dynamism, catching all the drama and joy in the music. [...] I cited Fischer's technique above: you may well watch and listen in awe to her incredibly subtle and utterly dazzling encore performance of the finale of the Hindemith Solo Violin Sonata in G minor."Review BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall with Julia Fischer, violin, by Robert Cummings, Classical Net, 2015.
The Beethoven violin concerto In the 2018–2019 concert season Fischer played the Beethoven violin concerto with Michael Tilson Thomas and the London Symphony Orchestra in London on 30 May 2019.
Awards
Fischer was selected as one of 16 Violinists of the Century, alongside Jascha Heifetz and Yehudi Menuhin, for the 20-CD box set of the Süddeutsche Zeitung in 2006.This was confirmed in 2018. Fischer was on the List of 25 greatest violinists of all time, selected by experts, on the website of the UK radio station Classic FM, 6 April 2018. She was nominated Gramophone Classical Music Awards 2007 Artist of the year, succeeding Martha Argerich (1999) and preceding Hilary Hahn (2008). She was awarded the 2024 Rheingau Musik Preis on 4 July 2024 before a chamber music concert at Schloss Johannisberg.Rheingau Musik Preis 2024 geht an Julia Fischer (in German) Klassik heute 22 April 2024
Soloist on the violin and piano Fischer is a soloist who can expertly play both the violin part and the piano part of sonatas. Practicing both parts of Beethoven sonatas is the way her musical education began at the age of 4. This approach has enhanced her understanding of the harmony and style of the works she plays as a violinist.
She stopped practicing the piano for a few months while she was preparing for the Menuhin Competition in 1995 where she won 1st prize in the junior category.
On 1 January 2008, Fischer had her public debut as a pianist, performing Edvard Grieg's Piano Concerto in A minor with the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie at the Alte Oper, Frankfurt. The concert was conducted by Matthias Pintscher, who stepped in for Sir Neville Marriner. On the same occasion, she also performed the Violin Concerto No. 3 in B minor by Camille Saint-Saëns. Fischer performed this concert once more in Saint Petersburg on 4 January 2008.
Fischer about performing Fischer once said: "What is helpful for a career is that it is always about the music and not about the career. As soon as a young musician decides for certain reasons to have a career instead of using musical reasons, I can guarantee that it will be – if it will be at all – a short career. I truly believe that if someone wants to spend his professional life with music, he will – either as a soloist, orchestra member, teacher, concert promoter, or agent – in the end, it is unimportant. One should choose to become a musician because one believes that the world needs music and without music, the emotional life of human beings is going to die. Everything else will come with dedication and hard work."