Christoph Koncz is particularly noted for his interpretations of the works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. His recording of the Complete Violin Concertos as soloist and conductor with Les Musiciens du Louvre was released by Sony Classical in October 2020 under the title Mozart’s Violin and caused an international sensation for being the first recording of these famous works on the composer’s original Baroque violin. The Strad magazine described Koncz’s performance as “a masterly demonstration of melodic playing”.
Born in 1987 in Konstanz into an Austrian-Hungarian family of musicians, Christoph Koncz received his first violin lessons at the age of four. Only two years later he entered the Vienna University of Music, where he also enrolled in the conducting class of Mark Stringer in 2005. Master classes with Daniel Barenboim, Daniel Harding and David Zinman further enriched his musical education. At the age of just nine, he received worldwide acclaim for starring as child prodigy Kaspar Weiss in the Canadian feature film The Red Violin, which won an Academy Award for Best Original Score.
Christoph Koncz made his North American debut as a violin soloist at age twelve with Montreal Symphony Orchestra conducted by Charles Dutoit, leading to collaborations with conductors such as Sir Neville Marriner, Dmitry Sitkovetsky, Gábor Takács-Nagy and Marc Minkowski. An avid chamber musician, his musical partners include Leonidas Kavakos, Joshua Bell, Vilde Frang, Renaud Capuçon, Antoine Tamestit, Kim Kashkashian, Gautier Capuçon, Nicolas Altstaedt, Andreas Ottensamer and Rudolf Buchbinder. His concert engagements have taken him to numerous countries across Europe and to the Middle East, Asia, Australia as well as North and South America.
In 2008, at the age of twenty, Christoph Koncz was appointed principal second violin of the Vienna Philharmonic, a position he has held ever since. He plays the 1707 ex Brüstlein violin by Antonio Stradivari on generous loan by the National Bank of Austria.
