Julia Fischer

In the 2018-2019 concert season Fischer will play the Beethoven violin concerto with Michael Tilson Thomas and the London Symphony Orchestra in London on 30 May 2019.

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.”

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:

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.”

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.

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).

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 vice-like grip."

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."

"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)

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.

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).

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.

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).

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

Her Munich teacher, 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.

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.

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."

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.

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).

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.

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.

Julia Fischer is of German-Slovak ancestry. Her parents met as students in Prague. Her mother, Viera Fischer (née Krenková), was from the German minority in Czechoslovakia and immigrated from Košice to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1972. 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.

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 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.