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The German violinist, Arabella Miho Steinbacher, was born in Munich to a Japanese mother and a German father. When she was 3, her mother read that a German violin teacher had recently returned from Japan after studying the Suzuki method. She started violin lessons at that time. When she was nine 9 old, she was enrolled at the Munich College of Music and mentored by Ana Chumachenco. She came into contact with the Israeli violinist Ivry Gitlis, who was a source of musical inspiration and guidance of hers, and took part in master-classes by Dorothy DeLay and Kurt Sassmannshaus in Aspen, Colorado. She won several important prizes, including 3rd Prize at the Joseph Joachim International Violin Competition in Hanover (2000), and a grant from the Free State of Bavaria in 2001, then became a student of Anne-Sophie Mutter's Freundeskreis ("Circle of friends").
Celebrated worldwide as one of today’s leading violinists, Arabella Steinbacher has been praised as the “queen of the evening” for her “brilliant playing”, “extraordinary sound” and “softly blossoming tone”. Arabella Steinbacher frequently appears with world-class orchestras around the globe including the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and the Cleveland Orchestra. She has made acclaimed performances with the NDR Sinfonieorchester Hamburg, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo (OSESP), Orchestre National de France, Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg, Wiener Symphoniker, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, NHK Symphony Orchestra and the Bayerischer Rundfunk Symphonieorchester. She has collaborated with conductors including Herbert Blomstedt, Riccardo Chailly, Christoph von Dohnányi, Charles Dutoit,Christoph Eschenbach, Thomas Hengelbrock, Marek Janowski, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, Andris Nelsons, and Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
Highlights of the 2019-202020 season, include concerts with Camerata Salzburg and a tour with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. Arabella Steinbacher will also return to Washington DC with the National Symphony Orchestra and perform with Dresdner Philharmonie at Festival Bad Kissingen, both with conductor Marek Janowski. She will additionally tour her Antonio Vivaldi / Piazzolla project in Europe and play at the AIDS Gala in Munich. In Paris she is going to perform a program of J.S. Bach and Arvo Pärt with Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France.
Her recording with Radio-Symphonie-Orchester-Berlin and Vladimir Jurowski features the Paul Hindemithh and Britten violin concertos. Arabella Steinbacher has been recording exclusively for Pentatone since 2009. Among many international and national music prizes and nominations, she has been twice awarded the ECHO Klassik. Her most recent recording features the music of Richard Strauss including the Violin Concerto and transcriptions of lieder with conductor Lawrence Foster and the WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln.
As CARE ambassador, Arabella Steinbacher is driven to use music as a means to uplift and support those in need. She launched a December 2011 Japan tour in response to the tsunami disaster earlier that year. The DVD release "Arabella Steinbacher - Music of Hope" featured her outreach, and youth recitals from this tour and was released shortly after.
Arabella Steinbacher currently plays the Booth Stradivarius (1716) provided by the Nippon Music Foundation. She is represented worldwide by Tanja Dorn at Dorn Music. She married Wolfgang Schaufler, publisher at Universal Edition, Vienna, in 2017. |
