Linus Roth is a German violinist born (in Ravensburg, Germany) on May 31, 1977. (Ravensburg is about 100 miles west of Munich) In addition to his brilliant technique and uncompromising musicianship, he is known for having saved Polish composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg from oblivion. From age 15, Roth has been the recipient of many top awards at various violin competitions. Roth has also won the ECHO KLASSIK Award twice for his recordings under the EMI and Challenge Records labels. (The ECHO KLASSIK is Germany’s top classical music award.) In 2013, Roth received Gramophone music magazine’s Editor’s Choice honors for his recordings of Weinberg’s violin concerto, the Concertino for violin and chamber orchestra, and the complete works for violin and piano. Every Roth recording is easy to find on the internet. Among many other works, Weinberg also composed three sonatas for solo violin which Roth has also recently recorded. Although he has spent most of his career in Europe, Roth has played in venues across the world, including North and South America and the Far East. As is customary for many classical concert artists, he also plays chamber music (in concert) with a wide variety of world class musicians. Roth began violin lessons at age 5. He received his first instruction from his mother, who is a cellist. At age 6, he made his first public appearance. His first solo performance with orchestra, at which he played the Mendelssohn concerto (the one in e minor), took place at age 11. The following year, he began lessons in Zurich with Ukrainian-Polish violinist Nicolas Chumachenco, well-known violin pedagogue. Four years later, at age 16, he began studying with Russian violin Professor Zakhar Bron, in Lubeck, Germany. (Bron was also the teacher of Vadim Repin, Maxim Vengerov, Mari Samuelsen, and Daniel Hope.) Beginning at age 20, he started lessons with someone who would become his most influential teacher, Ana Chumachenco, first in Zurich, then in Munich. (Ana Chumachenco is Nicolas Chumachenco’s sister.) In 2012, Roth was appointed violin professor at the Leopold Music Center of Augsburg University where he still teaches. In 2018, he established the Ibiza (Spain) music festival called Ibiza Concerts. (Ibiza is an island off the eastern coast of Spain – a very short trip by airplane, but a long trip by ferry.) Toward that end, he is learning Spanish – he already speaks German, English, and Italian. He also was appointed Artistic Director, in 2020, of the Spring Music Festival at Ochsenhausen, Germany. (Ochsenhausen is about 60 miles west of Munich.) I believe all of their concerts will be streamed live in 2021, although I’m not absolutely sure about that. Up until the end of 2019, Roth maintained an incredibly busy concert schedule. However, his schedule was disrupted by events which took every artist around the world by surprise. Not one single artist was spared the consequences of the worldwide events which resulted from the severe Covid-19 pandemic. However, Roth wisely spent some of his time off doing a lot of recording that does not require an orchestra, including the six works for solo violin by Bach. I do not know if any of those CDs have been issued yet. Fortunately, as his website shows, an upcoming concert tour with Anne-Sophie Mutter as partner will relaunch his concert itinerary. In a recent interview, Roth was asked which two musicians from the past he would most like to meet; his choices were composer Ludwig Van Beethoven and conductor Carlos Kleiber. Beethoven is not an unusual choice, but Carlos Kleiber is. As far as I know, Kleiber never appeared with or conducted for any soloists on stage. His concerts were all-orchestral concerts or operas; same as his recordings. Nevertheless, many widely-respected musicians (and many music critics) regard him as the best conductor of the twentieth century. Roth has stated that he “wouldn’t want to discuss anything musical with him; rather, I would ask him about his views on life, spiritual things, and about the aura of certain other people he worked with. I’m sure he felt these intensely. In case we would have managed to have some glasses of wine together, I would ask him about his youth in South America, the atmosphere there, and his feelings about coming back to Munich in 1952 to be Korrepetitor [an opera singer’s coach and accompanist] at the Gärtnerplatz Theater München.” As for Weinberg, Roth first discovered his music in 2010 (one source says 2011.). He has championed Weinberg’s music ever since and founded (in 2015) the International Mieczyslaw Weinberg Society which promotes Weinberg’s music. Weinberg’s violin concerto was dedicated to Leonid Kogan, who recorded it in 1959 or 1960. Here is a YouTube video with Roth speaking briefly about the concerto, including footage of his recording session in Berlin in August, 2013. Unlike most concert violinists, Roth is not a chess player (he prefers backgammon), but in a matter of a few months, he will join Kristof Barati and Jeremy Constant as being one of the extremely rare people who are both concert violinists and airplane pilots. Roth maintains his mental and physical stamina by regularly working out at a gymnasium. (Arabella Steinbacher practices Yoga but, as far as I know, never sets foot in a gym.) Here is a YouTube video with Roth playing the Bach E major concerto. Be prepared to experience a very special and unexpected ending to that video. Here is another fascinating video showing a rehearsal for the recording session of the Tchaikovsky concerto with the London Symphony. Since 1997, Roth has played the 1703 Dancla Stradivarius, although he played many other violins before that, including a Landolfi of unknown date. The photo is courtesy of Belgian Photographer Diego Franssens.
