Arabella Steinbacher

Arabella Steinbacher is a German violinist (and pianist, as were Fritz Kreisler, Arthur Grumiaux, Louis Persinger, and as is Julia Fischer) born (in Munich) on November 14, 1981.  She is now in the forefront of concert violinists performing all over the world.  She began studying the violin with Helge Thelen at the age of three.  He was her teacher for six years.  At age nine, she became the youngest violin student of Ana Chumachenko at the Munich Academy of Music. She received further musical inspiration and guidance from Ivry Gitlis, one of the oldest living concert violinists (among whom are also Zvi Zeitlin, Camilla Wicks, Ida Haendel, Robert Mann, David Nadien, Albert Markov, Abram Shtern, and Ruggiero Ricci.)  In 2001, she was awarded a scholarship by the Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation.  She made her debut in March, 2004, in Paris, playing the Beethoven violin concerto, actually stepping in at the last moment for an indisposed violinist.  She was 22 years old.  Many other artists have begun their careers in similar fashion – Leonard Bernstein and Shlomo Mintz come to mind.  Steinbacher made her New York recital debut in June, 2006.  She has also already appeared with most major orchestras in the world – the New York Philharmonic and the Berlin Philharmonic are the exceptions.  Steinbacher has recorded extensively and many videos of her playing can be found on YouTube.  One such can be found here. She received the German Record Critics Award in 2005 for her recording of both of Darius Milhaud’s rarely-heard Violin Concertos.  She now records exclusively for PentaTone Classics.  Arabella Steinbacher plays the Booth Stradivarius (1716) provided by the Nippon Music Foundation and uses a bow from luthier Benoit Rolland.

Julia Fischer

Julia Fischer is a German violinist, pianist, and teacher born on June 15, 1983 (Perlman was 38 years old). She was a child prodigy. Fischer began her violin studies at age 4. At age 9, she entered the Munich Academy of Music where she studied with Ana Chumachenco. At age 12 (1995), she won the International Yehudi Menuhin Violin Competition. She began concertizing soon after. She made her Carnegie Hall debut in 2003. It has been publicized that to honor the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth, Fischer played on Mozart’s own violin (a Pietro Antonio Dalla Costa) in Salzburg. Her discography is fairly extensive already and her reviews are always full of superlatives. Her recordings of Prokofiev, Glazunov, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, and Bach have won accolades from reviewers. She plays with a ferocious technique but an unpretentious, alluring sound. YouTube has many videos of her performances. A little over a year ago, Fischer played Grieg’s piano concerto in Frankfurt, Germany. On that occasion, she also played the B minor violin concerto by Camille Saint Saens. Fischer uses a Guadagnini from 1742. She is also currently teaching at the University of Frankfurt. Unfortunately, she has a reputation for being very rude and arrogant with colleagues.