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The Moldovan-Austrian-Swiss violinist, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, comes from a family of musicians. Her parents were both with the state folk ensemble of Moldova: her mother, Emilia Kopatchinskaja, was a violinist, and her father, Viktor Kopatchinsky, was a cimbalom player. While her parents were on concert tour through the former Eastern bloc, she grew up with her grandparents. She started playing the violin at age 6. In 1989, the family fled to Vienna. She entered the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna at age 17, where she studied musical composition and violin. From age 21 to 23 she finished her studies in Bern, at the Musikhochschule, where her teachers included Igor Ozim. Her awards include: 1st Prize at the International Henryk Szeryng Competition in Mexico (2000); Credit Suisse Young Artist Award (2002); New Talent - SPP Award of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) (2004); Deutschlandfunk-award of the Bremer Musikfest (2006).
In 2016, Patricia Kopatchinskaja wrote an editorial for The Guardian outlining her approach to music and her career and her preference for playing music "from the borders" of the repertoire instead of the standard repertoire of "Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, and Bruch." She later said, "Standard pieces should be used only as exceptional, rare elements in programs. There are enough recordings out there already.… The classical music industry is so far behind. If someone does anything that’s even just a tiny bit different, it becomes a huge, heated discussion." The British Royal Philharmonic Society in 2014 gave he one of its annual Music Awards in the instrumentalist category, calling her an "irresistible force of nature: passionate, challenging and totally original in her approach".
Patricia Kopatchinskaja has played with most of the important European orchestras including Wiener Philharmoniker, Berliner Philharmoniker and London Philharmonic Orchestra. She regularly plays in Japan and Australia and recently also extended her activity to the USA, South America, Russia and China. She has ongoing collaborations with conductors including Teodor Currentzis, Péter Eötvös, Tito Muñoz, Iván Fischer, Heinz Holliger, Vladimir Jurowski, Andrés Orozco-Estrada, Kirill Petrenko, Sir Simon Rattle and François-Xavier Roth. Her experience as a leader of ensembles and chamber orchestras includes a tour with Britten Sinfonia, repeated tours with Mahler Chamber Orchestra and Australian Chamber Orchestra and being an artistic partner of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra since 2014. Presently she is an artistic partner of the Camerata Bern. She has organised several staged concert productions, including "Death and the Maiden" with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, "Bye-Bye Beethoven" with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, "Dies Irae" with Lucerne Festival Alumni, and "War and Chips" and "Time and Eternity" with Camerata Bern. From 2003 to 2005, she organised the Rüttihubeliade festival in the Swiss Alps. In June 2018, she was the music director of the Ojai Music Festival in California.
Regular chamber music partners include cellist Sol Gabetta, clarinettist Reto Bieri and the pianists Joonas Ahonen, Markus Hinterhäuser, Christopher Hinterhuber, Polina Leschenko and Anthony Romaniuk. In April 2016, Patricia Kopatchinskaja performed with Anoushka Shankar at a concert in Konzerthaus Berlin, Germany. The Raga Piloo was composed, performed and recorded by Ravi Shankar as a duet with Yehudi Menuhin on the album West Meets East, Volume 2 in 1968.
Patricia Kopatchinskaja has collaborated with Il Giardino Armonico, the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, MusicAeterna Perm, the Orchestre des Champs-Élysées, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment under the direction of Giovanni Antonini, René Jacobs and Philippe Herreweghe. She also has performed with Sir Roger Norrington and Roy Goodman.
Patricia Kopatchinskaja has been outspoken in her support of new works and living composers, as well as works not considered part of the standard violin repertoire. She has performed and recorded works by Luca Francesconi, Francisco Coll García, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Sanchez-Chiong, Stefano Gervasoni, Simone Movio, Michael Hersch, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Péter Eötvös, Heinz Holliger, and Michel van der Aa. Her "Time and Eternity" program with Camerata Bern, recorded for Alpha Classics, featured music by John Zorn, Ikonnikow, Tadeusz Sygietynski, Machaut, and J.S. Bach, along with Karl Amadeus Hartmann's Concerto Funebre.
Patricia Kopatchinskaja plays a violin by Giovanni Francesco Pressenda (Turin) in 1834, which The Strad's Dennis Rooney called "a very colourful-sounding instrument whose viola-like quality lent her playing exceptional tonal interest". In 2010, she briefly played the 1741 "ex-Carrodus" violin by Guarneri del Gesù, on loan from the Austrian National Bank, but had to give it back because of unresolvable problems with Swiss customs authorities. In period-instrument environments she uses a violin by Ferdinando Gagliano (Naples, ca. 1780, mounted with a lowered bridge and gut strings) and appropriate bows.
Patricia Kopatchinskaja uses the voice in several compositions, including John Cage's Living Room Music, Jorge Sanchez-Chiong's Crin, Michael Hersch's Duo for violin and cello Das Rückgrat berstend, Heinz Holliger's Das kleine Irgendwas, her own cadenza for György Ligeti's Violin Concerto, and Otto Zykan's Das mit der Stimme. In 2017, she performed the voice part (Sprechgesang) in Arnold Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire in the USA and since 2018 has performed the piece many times with, among others, members of the Berliner Philharmoniker, Montreal Symphony Orchestra, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, and her own ensemble. In 2018-2019 Kopatchinskaja and some friends made a film based on Kurt Schwitters's Dadaistic nonsense poem Ursonate (1932). It has been shown at several festivals.
Patricia Kopatchinskaja gave first performances of numerous works, e.g.: 2004/2005 seven first performances, among them violin concertos dedicated to her by Johanna Doderer and Otto Zykan; 2005/2006 first performances of violin concertos dedicated to her by Gerald Resch and Gerd Kühr with the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra; 2007/2008 first performances of violin concertos dedicated to her by Jürg Wyttenbach and the Turkish composer/pianist Fazil Say; 2009 first performance of the violin concerto dedicated to her by Faradj Karajew; 2011 first performance of violin concertos dedicated to her by Maurizio Sotelo and Helmut Oehring ("Four seasons") as as the work Oh whispering suns for double choir, solo violin and cymbal by Vanessa Lann; 2012 first performance of the Romance for violin and strings dedicated to her by Tigran Mansurian with Amsterdam Sinfonietta; 2014 first performance of her own violin concerto Hortus animae with Camerata Bern; 2015 (August) first performance of Dialogue, concerto for Violin, Cello and Orchestra by Mark-Anthony Turnage (with Sol Gabetta and Gstaad Festival Orchestra); 2015 (November) first performance of the violin concerto written for her by the American composer Michael Hersch with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra; 2016 first performance of Mauricio Sotelo's Red Inner Light Sculpture for Solo Violin, Strings, percussion and Flamenco Dancer (commissioned by P.K.); 2017 first performance of Michael Hersch's duet for violin and cello Das Rückgrat berstend, with Jay Campbell; 2019 first performance of Michel van der Aa's Double concerto for violin and violoncello with Sol Gabetta, Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam and Péter Eötvös; 2019 first performance of Francisco Coll's double concerto für violin and violoncello with Sol Gabetta und Camerata Bern, composer directing; 2019 first performance of Francisco Coll's LaLuLa-Lied; 2019 first performance of the duo for violin and cello by Marton Illes with Jay Campbell in Santa Barbara, California; 2020 first performance of the violin concerto by Marton Illes with WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln, directed by Michael Wendeberg; 2020 first performance of the violin concerto by Francisco Coll with Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg directed by Gustavo Gimeno; 2020 first performance of the violin concerto Possible Places by Dmitri Kourliandski (b1976) with SWR Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart and Teodor Currentzis; 2020 First performance of the double concerto for two violins Gemini by Helene Winkelmann, with Helene Winkelmann, Sinfonieorchester Basel and Ivor Bolton. Richard Carrick, Violeta Dinescu, Michalis Economou, Heinz Holliger, Ludwig Nussbichler, Jorge Sánchez-Chiong, Ivan Sokolov, and Boris Yoffe have also written works for her.
Patricia Kopatchinskaja's albums and performances have won numerous awards, including: 2008: Award of the music commission Kanton Bern, Switzerland; 2009: ECHO in the category chamber music for the CD recorded with Fazil Say (works by L.v. Beethoven, Ravel, Béla Bartók & Fazil Say; 2010: BBC-Music-Magazine award (orchestral category) for the CD recorded with Philippe Herreweghe and the Orchestre des Champs Elysees: Collected works for violin and orchestra by L.v. Beethoven; 2011: "Golden Bow"-award of the Meiringen music festival, Switzerland; 2012: Praetorius music award of the county Niedersachsen, Germany in the category "musical innovation"; 2013: ECHO in the category concert recording of the year (20th/21st century/violin) for the double-CD with violin concertos by Béla Bartók, Ligeti and Péter Eötvös, recorded with the hr-Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt respectively Ensemble Modern under Péter Eötvös (Naive); 2013: Gramophone Award "Recording of the year" and Grammy-nomination, both for the double-CD with violin concertos by Béla Bartók, Ligeti and Péter Eötvös, recorded with the hr-Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt respectively Ensemble Modern under Péter Eötvös (Naive); 2014: International Classical Music Awards (Category Concerto) for the double CD with violin concertos by Béla Bartók, Ligeti and Péter Eötvös; 2014: Prix Caecilia (Belgium) for the CD with violin concertos by Igor Stravinsky and Prokofjev recorded with London Philharmonic Orchestra and Vladimir Jurowski (Naive); 2014: Royal Philharmonic Society Music Awards 2013 (Category instrumentalist); 2016: Music Award of the Canton of Bern, Switzerland for "remarkable musical achievements"; 2017: Grand Prix of the Swiss Music Awards; 2018: Grammy in the ‘Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance’ category for her "Death & The Maiden" album with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra on Alpha Classics; 2019: 29. Würth-Prize of the Jeunesses Musicales Germany; Honorary Membership Konzerthausgesellschaft Vienna.
Patricia Kopatchinskaja's Swiss neurologist husband, and their daughter live in Bern, Switzerland. |
