Julia Fischer

Julia Fischer (born 15 June 1983) is a German classical violinist and pianist. She teaches at the Munich University of Music and Performing Arts and performs up to 60 times per year.
Biography
Julia Fischer is of German-Slovak ancestry. Her parents met as students in Prague. 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." 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.
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 Munich University of Music and Performing Arts, 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. As a teenager she was inspired by Glenn Gould, Evgeny Kissin, and Maxim Vengerov.
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 category as well as all of the special prizes, including the Bach prize for the best solo performance of the composer's work.
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."
Her teacher in 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. She has been giving concerts since she was 11 and started teaching as a violin professor at 23.
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. 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.
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 Munich University of Music and Performing Arts.
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.
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."
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
Fisher was selected as one of 16 Violinists of the Century, alongside Jascha Heifetz and Yehudi Menuhin, for the 20-CD box set of the Sueddeutsche Zeitung in 2006. She was nominated Gramophone Classical Music Awards 2007 Artist of the year, succeeding Martha Argerich (1999) and preceding Hilary Hahn (2008).
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."
In an interview in May 2006, she said the Beethoven violin concerto is probably the concerto she likes most. Her mother taught Fischer and her brother to play the piano just for the love of classical music. The jury of the 2006 BBC Music Magazine Awards said, "There are many recordings of Bach's works for solo violin but rarely do they reach such breathtaking heights of musicianship as this one. Julia Fischer is an incredible technician and soulful musician who does not let an ounce of ego come between the music and the listener."
In 2010, a critic for the Guardian wrote: "Although still in her mid-20s, she has been playing Bach for nearly two decades, in a daily act of private worship. [...] Fischer's full-blooded sound still allows for breathtaking precision: with her perfect understanding of the even rhythm and mounting tension at the work's core, she held the audience in a vise-like grip."
"On a concert stage, performing music by Bach, Schubert or Sibelius, the superb young German violinist Julia Fischer is the picture of focus and discipline. Offstage, she's just the same." (Joshua Kosman about Julia Fischer 3 June 2009)
Chamber music
In 2011, Fischer founded the Fischer quartet with Alexander Sitkovetsky (violin), Nils Mönkemeyer (viola), and Benjamin Nyffenegger (cello). The quartet went on tour in early 2018 with stops in Leipzig, London, Luxembourg, Munich and Zürich. Music partners in chamber music are Daniel Müller-Schott (cello), Milana Chernyavska, Yulianna Avdeeva, and Igor Levit (piano).
Repertoire
The composers Fischer spent the most time with are Beethoven, Bach, Dvořák, Schubert and Brahms. Her active repertoire spans from Bach to Penderecki, from Vivaldi to Shostakovich, containing over 40 works with orchestra and about 60 works of chamber music. She is known for her performance of Bach's work, winning the Bach prize at the 1995 Menuhin competition and the 2006 BBC Music Magazine Awards Best Newcomer for the CD Johann Sebastian Bach, Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin (BWV 1001–1006).
Instruments
Currently, Fischer plays a Guadagnini 1742 purchased in May 2004, and also a violin by Philipp Augustin 2011, which she has owned since 2012. For four years prior to that, she had been using a Stradivarius, the 1716 Booth, on loan from Nippon Music Foundation, an instrument that had previously belonged to another violinist, Iona Brown. She usually uses a Benoît Rolland bow, but sometimes a copy of the Heifetz Tourte by the Viennese maker Thomas Gerbeth for early Classical period music.
Fischer said in August 2010: "I played on an adult-sized violin (4/4) ever since I was ten years old. The quality of my instruments improved as time passed: Ventapane, Gagliano, and then Testore, up to a Guarneri del Gesù in 1998. However, I wasn't satisfied with that violin, and changed to a Stradivarius — the 1716 Booth, property of the Nippon Music Foundation — on which I played for four years, with which I was well pleased. However, I always wanted to have an instrument of my very own. Thus, six years ago, in London, I bought, with the advice of the concertmaster of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, who is one of my best friends, the 1742 Guadagnini."
Recordings
In fall 2004, the label Pentatone released Fischer's first CD: Russian violin concertos with Yakov Kreizberg and the Russian National Orchestra. It received rave reviews, climbing into the top five best-selling classical records in Germany within a few days and receiving an "Editor's Choice" from Gramophone in January 2005. Other critically acclaimed recordings include sonatas and partitas for solo violin of J. S. Bach, the Mozart violin concerto and the Tchaikovsky violin concerto. After five years with Pentatone, in 2009, Fischer signed a contract with Decca Classics.
She has published a number of acclaimed and awarded CDs for Pentatone (Russian violin concertos, the Solo Sonatas, and Partitas by Bach, the Mendelssohn Trios, the Mozart concertos, the Brahms Vc. and Double Concerto) as well as for Decca (Bach Violin concertos, Paganini 24 Caprices for Violin solo, Impressionistic music under the title 'Poème', and the Dvorak/Bruch combi Made in Switzerland) plus two DVDs (Vivaldi, The Four Seasons and her New Year's Concert 2008 in Frankfurt, where she soloed both on violin and piano).
Fischer about recording
About recording for Pentatone, Fischer once said: "I had offers from big companies but none appealed. You don't have to record. Yakov [Kreizberg] spoke to the people at Pentatone and to me and put us together. Pentatone more or less gave me carte blanche as to what I record and the musicians I work with are my choice; all these things were so important to me. I record to experience something and to help my playing and music-making. For the concerto CD, Yakov and I really talked about the pieces; I learnt so much by that."
According to Strings Magazine, "When Kreizberg asked her to record with the Russian National Orchestra, she said yes, but privately wondered whether it would come to pass, knowing that such impulsive recording plans often disappear into thin air. Still after their last performance in Philadelphia, Kreizberg already had the dates and suddenly Fischer, who had not even decided whether she wanted to start recording regularly, had a three-year, seven-CD contract with PentaTone, the new high-tech Dutch label headed by former Philips Classics executives, and one of the first labels to embrace the new SACD 5.1-channel surround-sound technology."
The article went on to say that "Although she still wavered, what decided her to sign on the dotted line was that all the concerto recordings would be conducted by Kreizberg."
Prizes and honors
Fischer has won five prizes for her violin playing and three prizes for her piano playing at Jugend musiziert.
She won all eight competitions she entered.
In 1997, Fischer was awarded the "Prix d'Espoir" by the Foundation of European Industry. She had the opportunity to play Mozart's own violin in the room in which he was born at Salzburg to honor the 250th anniversary of his birth.
1995: 1st Prize at the international Yehudi Menuhin competition, in addition to a special prize, "Best Bach Solo-work".
1996: Winner 8th Eurovision Competition for Young Instrumentalists in Lisbon
1997: Prix d'Espoir the prize of the European music industry
1997: Soloist prize of the festival "Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania"
1998: EIG Music Award
2000: Promotion prize Deutschlandfunk
2005: ECHO Klassik Award for the CD Russian Violin Concertos
2005: Winner of the Beethoven Ring
2006: During the celebrations of Mozart's birthday in his hometown Salzburg, Fischer played on Mozart's violin (with Daniel Müller-Schott and Jonathan Gilad). About the event, she says: "During the first hour I couldn't play anything I wanted, because during the days of Mozart the violins were a lot shorter and I wasn't used to that".
2006: "BBC Music Magazine Awards 2006 Best Newcomer" for the CD Johann Sebastian Bach, Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin (BWV 1001–1006).
2007: The Classic FM Gramophone Awards Artist of the Year.
2007: ECHO Klassik Award for the CD Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto
2009: MIDEM Classical Award as "Instrumentalist of 2008".
Private life
Fischer is married and has two children. She lives in Gauting, a suburb of her home town of Munich.
Discography
References
External links
Julia Fischer's fan club
Julia Fischer's homepage
Violinist Fischer juggles balance, discipline, article by Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle, 2009
Julia Fischer's site at Universal Music
Julia Fischer's site at Pentatone Music
Julia Fischer's site at Decca Classics
Audio interview of Julia Fischer from May 2006 on the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Musicians site, 7:48 min
Article featured in Strings magazine, May 2006, No. 139
„Ich muss nicht sterben, um das zu spielen" Interview with Julia Fischer from 29 February 2008
Julia Fischer playing Brahms Double Concerto, 33:54 min
1983 births
Living people
German classical violinists
German women violinists
German women academics
German classical pianists
German women pianists
Winners of Eurovision Young Musicians
Women classical violinists
Carpathian German people
German people of Slovak descent
20th-century German musicians
20th-century classical violinists
21st-century German musicians
21st-century classical violinists
21st-century classical pianists
Academic staff of the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich
20th-century German women
21st-century German women
20th-century women pianists
21st-century women pianists