Patricia Kopatchinskaja

Violin

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“A player of rare expressive energy and disarming informality, of whimsy and theatrical ambition”
(Zachary Woolfe, New York Times, 2018)

Artistic Partner: The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra

Combining brilliance and mischief, Kopatchinskaja always brings a sense of humour and theatrics to her music. Whether performing a violin concerto by Tchaikovsky, Ligeti or Schoenberg or presenting an original staged project deconstructing works by Beethoven, Ustwolskaja or Cage, her distinctive approach can always be found.

Highlights of the 2019/20 season include: European tours with the Budapest Festival Orchestra and Iván Fischer, London Symphony Orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle and a Far-East Tour with Teodor Currentzis. Special highlights include the world premiere of a new commission by Francisco Coll with Philharmonie Luxembourg and a new collaboration with soprano, Anna Prohaska and Camerata Bern. Maria Mater Meretrix includes works by Kurtag, Martin and Holst and amongst others, will tour to Cologne, Frankfurt and Amsterdam.

Last season included the world premiere and European Tour of a Vivaldi project with Il Giardino Armonico featuring new works by living composers, which will be released on disc (Alpha) in summer 2020. Kopatchinskaja also made important debuts with Orchestre symphonique de Montréal (Nagano) and Los Angeles Philharmonic (Gražinytė-Tyla). She gave a Japanese Tour with Currentzis and performances with the Berliner Philharmoniker (Petrenko).

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

Kopatchinskaja appears regularly with artists such as: Polina Leschenko with whom she toured recently to Japan and the U.S; Reto Bieri, with whom she premiered a new trio programme at the Wigmore Hall (with Leschenko) which will tour this season and cellist, Jay Campbell whom she will join in January 2020 for recitals in Washington, Boston, Santa Barbara and San Francisco.

In addition to her regular performance schedule, Kopatcinskaja continues to curate interesting and original projects including her most recent, ‘Pierrot Lunaire’, which was performed with the Berliner Philharmoniker this summer and followed the success of ‘Dies Irae’ and ‘Bye Bye Beethoven’.

As a passionate campaigner against global heating, last season Kopatchinskaja partnered with musicians from the Staatskapelle Berlin (founders of the Orchester des Wandels) to perform ‘Dies Irae’ in support of the NaturTon Foundation. Kopatchinskaja is also a humanitarian ambassador for Terre des Hommes, the leading Swiss child relief agency.
Kopatchinskaja held the position of Artistic Partner of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra from 2014 – 2018. She was awarded the Swiss Grand Award for Music by the Federal Office of Culture for Switzerland in 2017 and has held positions as Artist in Residence at various festivals including Lucerne (2017) and Ojai (2018). In 2018 she won a Grammy Award in the Best Chamber and Small Ensemble Performance category for Death and the Maiden with The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra (Alpha) and was nominated in 2014 in the Best Classical Instrumental Solo category (Naïve).

Recent releases include Michael Hersch Violin Concerto recorded with International Contemporary Ensemble and Deux, a duo recital disc with Polina Leschenko. Forthcoming recordings include her first release with Camerata Bern, Time and Eternity (Alpha) due for release in autumn 2019.

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

“Kopatchinskaja was like a car teasing a butterfly, always ready to pounce on a passing phrase, whether answering the first violins or duetting with a perky clarinet. It has become her calling card to make the familiar unfamiliar.”

(Rebecca Franks, The Times, May 2019)

“The orchestra’s brilliantly daft staging of John Cage’s Europeras inside a backlot stage at Sony Studios would have been a landmark event in any year, and yet L.A. Phil’s presentation of provocative violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja and pianist Gloria Cheng deconstructing pieces by John Cage and Sofia Gubaidulina at the Getty Center proved anew how exciting new music can be when it’s delivered in unusual formats and settings by subversive and committed musicians who don’t mind standing in bathtubs and popping balloons while they perform.”

(LA Weekly, May 2019)

“Kopatchinskaja’s violin swooped and swerved…It was that subtle but constant sense of music’s theatrical potential that underpinned everything”

(Erica Jeal, The Guardian, April 2019)

Kopatchinskaja’s wild Tchaikovsky
“…it was clear that Kopatchinskaja and Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla were musically, historically, and emotionally on the same page. Conductor and soloist wielded their bow and baton like a pair of swashbucklers in a duel between the violin and the orchestra that made everything old sound new again.”

(Jim Farber, San Francisco Classical Voice, April 2019)

“[She] is a phenomenal virtuoso with the necessary technique to burn and the bravery to then burn it”

(Mark Swed, LA Times, April 2019)

“Patricia Kopatchinskaja never fails to engage both the listener’s ears and mind with performances of personality that make scores live as if freshly discovered. Leschenko is the perfect partner.”

(Gramophone, December 2018)

“Patricia Kopatchinskaja, who commissioned the concerto (Hersch Violin Concerto), aptly describes it as ‘brutal and vulnerable at the same time’, and her performance conveys that dichotomy with ferocious commitment, aided with fearlessness by the International Contemporary Ensemble under Tito Muñoz. The music’s intense physicality and bleak atmosphere make for gripping, if harrowing, listening. What draws me to listen again and again is Hersch’s ability to communicate desperation that somehow never plummets into despair.”

(Andrew Farach-Colton, Gramophone, October 2018)

“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)