Julia Fischer facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Julia Fischer
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Fischer in 2006
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| Born | 15 June 1983 |
| Education | Munich University of Music and Performing Arts with Ana Chumachenco |
| Occupation | Violinist violist pianist violin professor |
| Years active | 1995–present |
| Awards | Yehudi Menuhin International Competition for Young Violinists Junior category 1st Prize 1995 Gramophone Classical Music Awards 2007 Artist of the year |
Julia Fischer (born on June 15, 1983) is a famous German classical musician. She plays the violin, viola, and piano. She also teaches violin at the Munich University of Music and Performing Arts. Julia performs in concerts up to 60 times each year!
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About Julia Fischer
Julia Fischer's family comes from Germany and Slovakia. Her parents met when they were students in Prague. Her mother is Viera Fischer, and her father, Frank-Michael Fischer, is a mathematician. He moved from East Germany to West Germany in 1972. Besides German, Julia also speaks English and French very well.
Julia started playing the violin before she turned four years old. Her first lesson was with Helge Thelen. A few months later, she began piano lessons with her mother. Julia once said, "My mother is a pianist and I wanted to play the piano as well, but since my elder brother also played the piano, I thought it would be nice to learn another instrument. I agreed to try out the violin and stayed with it." Julia believes that learning piano helps musicians understand music better.
When she was eight, Julia started learning violin seriously at the Leopold Mozart Conservatory in Augsburg. Her teacher was Lydia Dubrowskaya. At nine, she was accepted into the Munich University of Music and Performing Arts. There, she studied with Ana Chumachenco.
At twelve, she played Beethoven's Violin Concerto for the first time in her mother's hometown in East Slovakia. Later, she played it again with Yehudi Menuhin in Vienna. Beethoven was also a favorite composer for her mother and brother.
Music Competitions
Two important competitions helped Julia Fischer start her career as a professional violinist. The most famous one she won was the 1995 International Yehudi Menuhin Violin Competition. This competition happened in Folkestone and was overseen by Yehudi Menuhin.
Julia won first prize in the junior category. She also won all the special awards, including the Bach prize for playing a piece by Bach the best.
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 clearly more inspired than anyone in the senior category."
Her teacher in Munich, Ana Chumachenco, made sure Julia stayed humble by having her practice difficult pieces by Sarasate. In 1996, Julia won another big contest, the Eighth Eurovision Competition for Young Instrumentalists in Lisbon. This competition was shown on TV in 22 countries.
Julia's Career
Becoming a Solo Artist
Julia started her career early. She went to high school until she was 19, studying math and physics along with music. She finished high school in 2002. She has been giving concerts since she was 11. At 23, she became a violin professor.
Julia has worked with many famous conductors from around the world. Some of them include Simon Rattle, Lorin Maazel, and Christoph Eschenbach. She has also played with many top orchestras from different countries.
She has performed in most European countries, the United States, Brazil, and Japan. Her concerts have been shown on TV and radio in many places.
Lorin Maazel as a Guide
Lorin Maazel was the main conductor of the Munich-based Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra from 1993 to 2002. He was like a mentor to Julia since 1997. He used to perform with Julia in a concert at least once a year. Maazel first had Julia play as a soloist with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra at the Bad Kissingen festival. Then, in March 2000, she played with them in Munich.
Playing at Carnegie Hall
The year 2003 was very important for Julia's career. She played for the first time at Carnegie Hall in New York City. Everyone stood up and clapped loudly for her performance of Brahms' Double Concerto with Lorin Maazel and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.
In 2003, Julia also played for the first time with the Berlin Philharmonic and the London Symphony Orchestra. Even though the music piece changed unexpectedly two weeks before the concert, from the Beethoven violin concerto to the Bartók violin concerto (which Julia had never played before), she played it perfectly.
Julia had performed many times in the U.S. before 2003. That year, she also played with the New York Philharmonic under Lorin Maazel. She performed the Sibelius Violin Concerto in New York's Lincoln Center and the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in Vail, Colorado.
She has toured with Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, and with Herbert Blomstedt and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra.
In 2006, Julia became a professor at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts. She was the youngest professor in Germany at that time. In 2011, Julia took over her former teacher Ana Chumachenco's job at the Munich University of Music and Performing Arts.
At the 2011 Salzburg Easter Festival, Julia played the violin concerto by Alban Berg with Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic. In May 2013, she performed for the first time with the Vienna Philharmonic. She played violin concertos by Esa-Pekka Salonen and Ludwig van Beethoven.
At the Proms
When Julia played the Dvořák violin concerto with David Zinman and the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich at the BBC Proms on July 21, 2014, the concert was recorded. People said it was amazing: "Julia Fischer plays the Dvořák violin concerto wonderfully. She plays with a great sense of how fast or slow to play, using many different loud and soft sounds in a creative way. Her playing is perfectly in tune, and her skill is amazing. She is very poetic in the lovely second movement. In the other parts, she plays with lots of energy, showing all the exciting and happy parts in the music. You will be amazed by her incredibly detailed and brilliant extra performance of the finale of the Hindemith Solo Violin Sonata in G minor."
The Beethoven Violin Concerto
In the 2018–2019 concert season, Julia Fischer played the Beethoven violin concerto with Michael Tilson Thomas and the London Symphony Orchestra in London on May 30, 2019.
Awards and Honors
Julia Fischer was chosen as one of 16 Violinists of the Century in 2006. This put her alongside famous violinists like Jascha Heifetz and Yehudi Menuhin. She was named Gramophone Classical Music Awards 2007 Artist of the Year. She received the 2024 Rheingau Musik Preis on July 4, 2024, before a concert.
Playing Violin and Piano
Julia Fischer is a special musician because she can play both the violin and piano parts of music pieces called sonatas very well. She started learning both parts of Beethoven sonatas when she was four. This helped her understand the music's sound and style better.
She stopped practicing the piano for a few months when she was getting ready for the Menuhin Competition in 1995. She won first prize in the junior category there.
On January 1, 2008, Julia had her first public performance playing the piano. She played Edvard Grieg's Piano Concerto in A minor with the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie in Frankfurt. The concert was led by Matthias Pintscher, who took over for Sir Neville Marriner. In the same concert, she also played the Violin Concerto No. 3 in B minor by Camille Saint-Saëns. Julia performed this concert again in Saint Petersburg on January 4, 2008.
Julia on Performing
Julia once said: "What is helpful for a career is that it is always about the music and not about the career. If a young musician decides to have a career for reasons other than music, I can guarantee that it will be – if it happens at all – a short career. I truly believe that if someone wants to spend their professional life with music, they 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."
In an interview in May 2006, she said the Beethoven violin concerto is probably the concerto she likes most. Her mother taught Julia and her brother to play the piano just for the love of classical music. The judges 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 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 vise-like grip."
"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, June 3, 2009)
Chamber Music
In 2011, Julia Fischer started the Fischer Quartet with Alexander Sitkovetsky (violin), Nils Mönkemeyer (viola), and Benjamin Nyffenegger (cello). The quartet went on tour in early 2018, playing in cities like Leipzig, London, and Munich. She also plays chamber music with other musicians like Daniel Müller-Schott (cello), Milana Chernyavska, Yulianna Avdeeva, and Igor Levit (piano).
Music She Plays
The composers Julia Fischer has spent the most time with are Beethoven, Bach, Dvořák, Schubert, and Brahms. Her active list of music includes pieces from Bach to Penderecki, and from Vivaldi to Shostakovich. This includes over 40 pieces with an orchestra and about 60 chamber music pieces. She is especially known for playing Bach's music. She won the Bach prize at the 1995 Menuhin competition and the 2006 BBC Music Magazine Awards Best Newcomer for her CD of Bach's Johann Sebastian Bach, Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin.
Her Instruments
Currently, Julia plays a Guadagnini violin from 1742, which she bought in 2004. She also has a violin made by Philipp Augustin in 2011. Before these, for four years, she used a Stradivarius violin called the 1716 Booth Stradivarius. This violin was on loan from the Nippon Music Foundation. She usually uses a Benoît Rolland bow, but sometimes uses a copy of the Heifetz Tourte bow for older classical music.
Julia 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."
Recordings
In 2004, the record label Pentatone released Julia Fischer's first CD. It featured Russian violin concertos with Yakov Kreizberg and the Russian National Orchestra. This CD was very popular and received great reviews. Other highly praised recordings include J. S. Bach's sonatas and partitas for solo violin, the Mozart violin concerto, and the Tchaikovsky violin concerto. After five years with Pentatone, Julia signed a contract with Decca Classics in 2009.
She has released many acclaimed CDs for Pentatone and Decca. She also has two DVDs, one featuring Vivaldi's The Four Seasons and another of her New Year's Concert in 2008, where she played both violin and piano.
Julia on Recording Music
About recording for Pentatone, Julia 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 freedom to choose 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."
According to Strings Magazine, "When Kreizberg asked her to record with the Russian National Orchestra, she said yes, but privately wondered whether it would happen, knowing that such quick recording ideas often don't happen. Still after their last performance in Philadelphia, Kreizberg already had the dates and suddenly Fischer, who had not even decided whether she wanted to start recording regularly, had a three-year, seven-CD contract with PentaTone."
The article also said that "Although she wasn't sure, what made her sign the contract was that all the concerto recordings would be conducted by Kreizberg."
Prizes and Honors
Julia Fischer has won many awards for her violin and piano playing. She won all eight competitions she entered for "Jugend musiziert." In 1997, she received the "Prix d'Espoir" from the Foundation of European Industry. She even got to play Mozart's own violin in the room where he was born in Salzburg to celebrate his 250th birthday.
- 1995: 1st Prize at the international Yehudi Menuhin competition, plus a special prize for "Best Bach Solo-work."
- 1996: Winner of the 8th Eurovision Competition for Young Instrumentalists in Lisbon.
- 1997: Prix d'Espoir from the European music industry.
- 1997: Soloist prize of the "Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania" festival.
- 1998: EIG Music Award.
- 2000: Promotion prize Deutschlandfunk.
- 2005: ECHO Klassik Award for the CD Russian Violin Concertos.
- 2005: Winner of the Beethoven Ring.
- 2006: During Mozart's birthday celebrations in Salzburg, Julia played on Mozart's violin. She said: "During the first hour I couldn't play anything I wanted, because during the days of Mozart the violins were a lot shorter and I wasn't used to that."
- 2006: "BBC Music Magazine Awards 2006 Best Newcomer" for the CD Johann Sebastian Bach, Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin.
- 2007: The Classic FM Gramophone Awards Artist of the Year.
- 2007: ECHO Klassik Award for the CD Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto.
- 2009: MIDEM Classical Award as "Instrumentalist of 2008."
- 2023: Solo violinist at the 2023 Nobel Prize Concert.
- 2024: Rheingau Musik Preis.
Private Life
Julia Fischer is married and has two children. She lives in Gauting, a town near her hometown of Munich.
See also
In Spanish: Julia Fischer para niños
