Patricia Kopatchinskaja

Violin

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“As an interpreter I am most interested in communicating the meaning and inner workings of the music. Curiosity drives me to explore many different musical frontiers.”
Patricia Kopatchinskaja

Violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja’s versatility shows itself in her diverse repertoire, ranging from baroque and classical often played on gut strings, to new commissions and re-interpretations of modern masterworks.

Kopatchinskaja’s 2017/18 season commences with the world premiere of her new project Dies Irae at the Lucerne Festival where she will be ‘artiste étoile’. Dies Irae is her second staged programme following the success of Bye Bye Beethoven with Mahler Chamber Orchestra in 2016 and uses the theme from the Latin Requiem Mass as a starting point for her new concept featuring music from Gregorian Chant and Early Baroque to Giacinto Scelsi and Galina Ustwolskaja. The North American premiere will take place at the Ojai Festival in June 2018 where Kopatchinskaja will be Music Director.

PATRICIA KOPATCHINSKAJA // Death and the Maiden #Schubert // with THE SAINT PAUL CHAMBER ORCHESTRA © Alpha Classics

The Stravinsky Violin Concerto will be a particular focus in 2017/18 — performances include the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Alain Altinoglu in London and on tour around Europe, Teodor Currentzis and the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich and with Gustavo Gimeno and the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra. Kopatchinskaja will also appear with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra under Rafael Payare, Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI and will be part of the Southbank Centre’s Ligeti weekend performing his Violin Concerto with Aurora Orchestra under Nicholas Collon and the Horn Trio with Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Marie-Luise Neunecker.

Chamber music is immensely important to Kopatchinskaja and she performs regularly with artists such as Markus Hinterhäuser, Polina Leschenko, Anthony Romaniuk and Jay Campbell appearing at such leading venues as the Berlin Konzerthaus, London’s Wigmore Hall, Vienna Konzerthaus and Concertgebouw Amsterdam.

A prolific recording artist, her latest release Death and the Maiden for Alpha is with The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra with whom she is an Artistic Partner.

Artistic Partner: The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra

Gallery

Patricia Kopatchinskaja: Pierrot © The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra

DEUX // Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Polina Leschenko (Ravel, Poulenc, Bartok) © Alpha Classics

2018 Ojai Music Director Patricia Kopatchinskaja © Ojai Music Festival

Patricia Kopatchinskaja - Take Two album trailer © Alpha Classics / Outhere Music France 2015

Patricia Kopatchinskaja - Kopatchinskaja on Bartók © Naïve Classique

Patricia Kopatchinskaja - Trailer for SFR documentary © Béla Batthyany/SRF 2012

Patricia Kopatchinskaja - Ligeti: Violin Concerto (excerpt) © naïve

Patricia Kopatchinskaja - Bartók: Violin Concerto No.2 (excerpt) © naïve

“She is a player of rare expressive energy and disarming informality, of whimsy and theatrical ambition. (Listen to her Tchaikovsky concerto recording, now!) In all these qualities, she was a perfect choice for Ojai, which each year invites a different artist — a performer, director, composer, conductor or choreographer — to plan the four-day festival as a concentrated shot of his or her enthusiasms.”

(New York Times, June 2018)

“This was a performance like no other, fabulously virtuosic with soloist and orchestra uncannily on the same wavelength.”

(About Bye Bye Beethoven at Ojai- Mark Swed, LA TIMES, June 2018)

“Nor is there anything ordinary about this latest CD, a recital with the pianist Polina Leschenko that is a feast of edgy, risk-filled music-making.”

(About Deux Recording- Erica Jeal, The Guardian, March 2018)

“One of the most distinctive voices in the violin world at the moment is surely that of Patricia Kopatchinskaja, whose previous recordings of works such as Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto have undoubtedly offered a unique take on familiar pieces. For her latest recording of music by Poulenc, Bartók and Ravel she is joined by pianist Polina Leschenko.”

(James Longstaffe, Presto Classical, February 2018)

“In the moments before pressing play on any new recording from Patricia Kopatchinskaja, the only thing you can be absolutely certain of is that you’re about to hear something brimming with personality, individuality and panache”

(Gramophone Magazine, February 2018)

“….And then there was Kopatchinskaja in the violin work, an astonishing force of nature, powering her way through its hair-raising difficulties as the orchestra conjured a half-remembered world that seems gradually to be slipping beyond recall, and throwing in a cadenza of her own for good measure, one totally consistent with Ligeti’s surreal world.”

***** (Andrew Clements, The Guardian, May 2018)

“Her voice was her instrument, Sprechstimme her style, a cross between speaking and singing to which she added dramatic movement and expression…She was a sprite in a deconstructed tux, fearless and wild.”

(Pamela Espleland, Minnesota Post October 2017)

“… Kopatchinskaja commanded the stage, the quintet around her perfectly in sync with her in both rhythm and spirit.”

(Rob Hubbard, Twin Cities Pioneer Press, October 2017)

“In between came a wondrous account of Berg’s violin concerto, written both to mark a death and in the year that Berg himself died. Patricia Kopatchinskaja’s account was fragile, eloquent and never portentous. Her playing captured this heartbreaking music with just the right mixture of tenderness and transcendence.”

(Martin Kettle, The Guardian, February 2017)

“[Ligeti’s Violin Concerto] suits the flamboyant Patricia Kopatchinskaja, who has both the monster technique and the theatricality that the piece demands…. The paradox of her extroversion is that it never seems exhibitionistic. Every gesture serves to underscore the music, and her playing has an animalistic wildness to it that is anything but self-serving. This is playing with guts and meaning, with burly physicality and risk, with a formidable toolkit that can take in everything from fragility to brutality.”

(Shirley Apthorp, Financial Times, February 2017)

“Patricia Kopatchinskaja shows her astonishing artistry on ‘Take Two’ and ‘Chiaroscuro … Her body and her instrument and the music she makes all seem one. She is ever thrilling alive to the moment … I don’t have to think twice about making my recording of the year.”

(Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times, November 2015)

“Patricia Kopatchinskaja excels in Thomas Larcher’s extraordinary violin concerto; she brings a fiery originality to everything she plays.” *****

(Michael Church, The Independent, October 2015)