Juliette Kang

Juliette Kang is a Korean violinist (many would say American or Canadian) born (in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada) on September 5, 1976.  She is currently the associate concertmaster of the Philadelphia Orchestra.  She began her career as a soloist but gravitated toward a high position as an orchestral player, a choice that possibly provides the best of both worlds since she continues to successfully concertize as soloist, chamber musician, and recitalist.  (Sometimes, orchestral players leave orchestral work to launch solo careers but that is very rare – only Janos Starker, Zino Francescatti, Emanuel Vardi, Pablo Casals, William Primrose, Emanuel Vardi, Berl Senofsky, Lynn Harrell, and Tossy Spivakovsky come to mind.  It is far more common for soloists to abandon the touring life in favor of a more tranquil existence as a first-desk orchestral player and/or teacher at a top music school.)  Kang began violin lessons with James Keene (concertmaster of the Edmonton Symphony) when she was 4 years old.  Three years later, she made her debut in Montreal.  Two years after that, at age 9 (or 10), she entered the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia where her main teacher was Jascha Brodsky, a well-known violin pedagogue.  At Curtis, she also studied chamber music with Felix Galimir.  In 1991 (after graduating from Curtis), she began studying at the Juilliard School in New York under Hyo Kang and Dorothy Delay.  She was 15 years old.  At 16, Kang made her New York debut in March, 1993 at the 92^nd Street Y.  Between 1983 and 1994, Kang won major prizes at several violin competitions here and abroad, including first prize at the Yehudi Menuhin violin competition in 1992 and first prize at the Indianapolis Violin Competition in 1994.  She was 18 years old when she won the Indianapolis competition.  (Among the top 60 prize winners since the Indianapolis competition’s inception in 1982, only six or seven players have achieved high-profile international recognition – Leonidas Kavakos, Simone Lamsma, Clara-Jumi Kang, Sergei Khachatryan, and Augustin Hadelich.)  After many solo appearances, Kang began her orchestral career in 1999, playing with the Kennedy Center Opera Orchestra.  She was 23 years old.  She then played in the first violin section of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra from 2001 to 2003 – Raymond Gniewek had just retired as concertmaster.  From 2003 to 2005, Kang was assistant concertmaster with the Boston Symphony.  In 2005, at age 29, she was appointed associate concertmaster of the Philadelphia Orchestra.  Now, she has curtailed her solo appearances to just three or four concerts per season.  As is customary, she also gets to be a featured soloist with her orchestra.  On her first solo appearance with the orchestra in 2012, she played Prokofiev’s first concerto.  In November of 2014 she played the Stravinsky concerto and in January, 2018 she played Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy with the orchestra.  Her discography includes her solo recital at Carnegie Hall and the Wieniawski and Schumann concertos with the Vancouver Symphony.  Kang plays a Camillo Camilli violin constructed in 1730 (approximately.)  I do not know whether she has or has had any students.  

Jinjoo Cho

Jinjoo Cho is a Korean violinist and teacher born (in Seoul) on July 12, 1988.  She is well-known as the winner of several violin competitions around the world (2005, 2006, 2010, 2013, 2014), the Indianapolis being the most important among them.  It is the nature of competitions that in 2012, Cho entered the Queen Elizabeth (of Belgium) violin competition and did not make it to the finals.  (Igor Pikayzen, a very successful violinist with a brilliant technique did not make the semi-finals in that same competition (that year), although he later won other competitions.  Erick Friedman came in sixth place in the Tchaikovsky competition in 1966…, and so it goes.)  Cho has – for the most part - studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music (CIM) and the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia.  Her main teachers have been Paul Kantor (for four years), Jaime Laredo, Zakhar Bron, Arnold Steinhardt, and Mark Steinberg.  She began her violin studies at age 5 and later attended the Korean Art School.   Cho came to the US at age 14 and enrolled at the CIM almost immediately.  In Cleveland, she also attended the Gilmour Academy, a private (boarding) school.  At age 26 (September, 2014), she won first prize in the Indianapolis International violin competition.  As a result, she is performing on the Gingold Stradivarius of 1683 (also known as the Martinelli Stradivarius), a four year loan from the competition.   Prior to winning the Indianapolis, she had been concertizing for many years (since the age of 16) and had gained extensive experience in orchestral work and chamber music playing due to her attendance at various summer music camps.  Her technique has been described as stunning and her playing as being full of passion.  She has been quoted as saying: “I think the importance of music is that it enables you to reach places in your heart that you might otherwise never reach.  It promotes soul searching.  Music also helps you see part of yourself and better understand people even in diverse situations.  Once you've experienced profound art, I really feel you are a citizen of the world.  You have a whole other means of traveling to different times and places that have shaped lives.”  Here is one YouTube video of her playing with piano accompaniment – the seldom-heard Francis Poulenc violin sonata.  

Barnabas Kelemen

Barnabas Kelemen is a Hungarian violinist and teacher born (in Budapest) on June 12, 1978.  He is known for having won the prestigious Indianapolis Violin Competition in 2002.  His repertoire is very extensive and includes Schumann’s concerto and Bruch’s second concerto which are seldom heard live.  Kelemen also plays a great deal of contemporary music.  On May 2, 2013, he premiered (in New York’s Carnegie Hall) a long lost concerto by Mihaly Nador, composed in 1903 (and revised in 1941-42) but never performed.  Reviewers of the performance compared Kelemen to Heifetz.  The audience applauded after each movement of the concerto, which is not typical, especially in the case of more modern works.  Kelemen began studying violin at age six with Valeria Baranyai.  He entered the Franz Liszt Academy at age 11 and studied with Eszter Perenyi.  He graduated in 2001.  He was 23 years old.  By then, he had already won first prize in the Mozart Violin Competition in Salzburg (1999.)  Three years after winning the Indianapolis competition, he began teaching (in 2005) at the same school from which he graduated.  In 2010, he founded (with his violinist wife Katalin Kokas) the Kelemen Quartet.  (Among violinists who married other concert violinists are Olga Kaler, Adele Anthony, Marina Markov, Ruth Posselt, and Elizabeth Gilels.)  The Kelemen Quartet has also received top prizes at chamber music competitions.  In addition, several of Kelemen’s recordings have also received awards from music periodicals and critics.  Interestingly, except for the cellist, the Kelemen Quartet players sometimes switch places with each other – alternating between first violin, second violin, and viola.  Kelemen has taken conducting lessons from Leif Segerstam and has already conducted a few concerts in Europe.  He often appears in the dual role of soloist-conductor with chamber orchestras.  Needless to say, Kelemen has toured the world several times (and continues to do so) as a soloist and with the quartet.  In 2014, he began teaching at the Advanced School for Music and Dance in Cologne, Germany.  Here is a YouTube video of his playing a well-known Mozart sonata.  It shows how different his temperament and style are from a more conventional concert violinist but you be the judge.  After winning the Indianapolis competition, Kelemen played the 1683 Stradivarius (Martinelli Stradivarius) that all Indianapolis competition winners get to use for four years.  (The Martinelli was “restored” in 2014 and is currently being played by Jinjoo Cho)  Kelemen is currently playing a Guarneri (del Gesu) constructed in 1742.  

Judith Ingolfsson

Judith Ingolfsson is an Icelandic violinist and teacher born (in Reykjavik, Iceland) on May 13, 1973.  From her home base in Germany, she leads a very busy international career and is well-known for being the Gold Medalist at the 1998 Indianapolis International Violin Competition, now considered one of the top three violin competitions in the world, on a par with the Queen Elizabeth and Tchaikovsky violin competitions, though these last two have been in existence far longer.  In 1999, she was named Debut Artist of the Year by National Public Radio (USA.)  In 2000, she toured the U.S. as soloist with the Iceland Symphony, culminating with highly acclaimed performances in Carnegie Hall (New York) and the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C.  WQXR (New York) and Chamber Music America gave her their Record Award for her debut CD in 2001.  She has toured throughout the world, appearing with almost every major orchestra, every major conductor, and in every important venue.  Her playing has been described as being “rock solid, marvelously precise, and very elegant.”  Ingolfsson began her violin studies at age 3 (same age as Jascha Heifetz when he began) and had performed in public by age 5.  Her first violin teacher was Jon Sen, concertmaster of the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra.  In 1980, her family immigrated to the U.S.  She was 7 years old.  She made her orchestral debut in Germany at age 8, playing Bach’s A minor concerto.  At the age of 14, she entered the Curtis Institute where her main teacher was the famous violin pedagogue Jascha Brodsky (pupil of Lucien Capet, Eugene Ysaye, and Efrem Zimbalist.)  Prior to that, she had a number of different teachers due to the fact that her family lived in various States before settling in Philadelphia.  It is fascinating that Guila Bustabo (a concert violinist who had the dubious distinction of having been arrested by General George C. Patton right after the end of World War Two) was one of her teachers.  Carol Glenn and Josef Gingold were also among her teachers during that time.  After graduation from Curtis, she studied further at the Cleveland Institute of Music under David Cerone and Donald Weilerstein.  In addition to her concert and recital engagements, Ingolfsson plays at a number of music festivals around the world, including the well-known Barge Music series in New York, the Spoleto Festival, Grand Teton Music Festival, Reykjavik Arts Festival, Juniper Music Festival (Utah), and the Aigues-Vives en Musiques Festival in France - Aigues-Vives is a small city in southern France, perhaps no more than 60 miles from the Spanish border.  Her chamber music concerts have included performances with the Miami String Quartet, the Vogler String Quartet, the Avalon String Quartet, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.  Ingolfsson has already appeared with over 100 different orchestras throughout the world, in addition to numerous television and radio broadcasts for PBS, CBS, and NHK (in Japan.)  She was appointed to the faculty of the University of Colorado (Boulder) in August of 2006 but soon moved to the Staatliche Hochschule fur Musik und Darstellende Stuttgart (State University of Music and Performing Arts Stuttgart) in Germany in October of 2008.  Her recital accompanist is usually (Russian concert pianist and conductor) Vladimir Stoupel, with whom she formed a duo (the Ingolfsson-Stoupel Duo) in 2006.  Ingolfsson has played the Gingold Stradivarius of 1683 (also known as the Martinelli Strad), a 1750 Lorenzo Guadagnini, and a modern violin by French luthier Yair Hod Fainas, constructed for her in 2010.  I have heard the Gingold and the Guadagnini up close for hours and both are great-sounding violins.  The Fainas violin I have not yet heard but I am willing to bet it has a gorgeous sound, as good a sound as the best Stradivari violins.  (I admit I much prefer new violins to old.)  Ingolfsson has been recording commercially since 1999.  Her abundantly-praised recording of the Tchaikovsky concerto can be found here.  You can also find out why her recent recording of the Ysaye Solo Sonatas has been so highly acclaimed here.  A wonderful YouTube video of Ingolfsson in performance can be seen (and heard) here.  The photo is by Michael Rosenthal, taken during a piano trio performance.  

Augustin Hadelich

Augustin Hadelich is a German violinist born (in Cecina, Italy) on April 4, 1984.  He is best known for a very fast rise to stardom after winning the Indianapolis Violin Competition in 2006.  It was virtually a clean sweep of the competition since he also won special awards for the best performance in the following categories: Romantic concerto, Classical concerto, Beethoven sonata, Bach work, commissioned work, encore piece, Paganini caprice, and sonata other than Beethoven.  His reviews have been full of superlatives since the beginning of his career and, understandably, he has already appeared with most of the world’s top orchestras.  He soloed with the New York Philharmonic at Avery Fisher Hall in New York on October 18, 2012, playing the Symphonie Espagnol by Edouard Lalo.  He had three times previously played with this orchestra, though not in New York.  He is not yet 29 years old.  Hadelich began his violin studies at age 5 with his father, a farmer who is also a cellist.  At the time, the family was living in Riparbella, Italy (in Tuscany – Riparbella is about 30 miles south of Florence.)  From about age 7, he studied (sporadically) with, among other teachers, Uto Ughi in Siena for a few years.  He eventually ended up in the Istituto Mascagni in Livorno (Italy) from which he graduated.  He was playing recitals in Europe during this time, too.  Later on, in Berlin, he studied at the Academy of Music.  From there he came to the U.S and enrolled at Juilliard, studying with Joel Smirnoff.  Hadelich graduated from Juilliard in 2007, a year after he won the Indianapolis competition.  His discography is small but, by all accounts, brilliant.  He has recorded all of Haydn’s violin concertos and Telemann’s fantasias for violin - rarely-heard works.  He also sometimes writes his own cadenzas, something that few contemporary violinists do.  Hadelich currently plays the Kiesewetter Stradivarius (1723) but previously played the 1683 Gingold Stradivarius.  One of his many YouTube videos is here.  And here is another – yes, he is that good!   

Alina Pogostkina

Alina Pogostkina is a Russian violinist born (in Leningrad) on November 18, 1983.  She began her lessons at age 4 with her father and gave her first concert one year later.  When she was 8 years old (1992), her family moved to Heidelberg, Germany.  According to one source, she and both of her parents - both are violinists – for some time made a living playing on the street.  Marie Hall did essentially the same thing in England, though without her parents.  Pogostkina is said to favor modern music.  She attended the Advanced School for Music in Berlin, studying with Antje Weithaas.  Along the way, she participated in several competitions, eventually winning the Jean Sibelius Competition in Helsinki in December of 2005, using a modern violin by Falk Peters.  She had already won the Louis Spohr Competition in 1997 (Freiburg, Germany) at age 14.  She also participated in the Queen Elizabeth and the Indianapolis Violin Competitions (2001 and 2002, respectively.)  Pogostkina now plays all over the world, accompanied by the best orchestras and the best conductors.  She also participates in quite a few music festivals around the world.  Her sound and technique is similar to Hilary Hahn’s – very crisp, emphatic, and clean with flawless intonation - but her musicianship is different.  YouTube has a few videos of her performances.  One is here, showing a complete (and spectacular) performance of the Sibelius concerto.  For a while, she was playing a 1709 Stradivarius violin, a loan from the German Music Instrument Fund.  Pogostkina now plays a modern violin by ChristianBayon.  Of course, if you are a regular reader of this blog, you know I absolutely favor modern violins over any old instrument.  The reason is that they are at least equal to any Amati, Strad, Guadagnini, Goffriller, or Guarneri and, in most cases, much better.