Antje Weithaas

“Antje Weithaas is one of the great violinists of our time.” (FonoForum)

Antje Weithaas’ charisma and stage presence are captivating, but never overshadow the works themselves. Unpretentious and always giving the music precedence, she brings her compelling musical intelligence and an unparalleled technical mastery to every detail of the music. One of the most sought-after artists of her generation, Antje Weithaas has a wide-ranging repertoire that includes the great concertos by Mozart, Beethoven and Schumann, new works such as Jörg Widmann’s Violin Concerto, modern classics by Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Ligeti and Gubaidulina, and lesser performed concertos by Hartmann and Schoeck.

As a soloist, Antje Weithaas has worked with most of Germany’s leading orchestras, including the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Bamberg Symphony and the major German radio orchestras, numerous major international orchestras such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Philharmonia Orchestra and the BBC Symphony, as well as and the leading orchestras of the Netherlands, Scandinavia, and Asia. She has collaborated with the illustrious conductors Vladimir Ashkenazy, Dmitri Kitayenko, Sir Neville Marriner, Marc Albrecht, Yakov Kreizberg, Sakari Oramo and Carlos Kalmar. She enjoys a close working relationship with conductor Antonello Manacorda, with whom she made her debut with the Orchestra Filharmonica del Teatro La Fenice in Venice (Brahms) last season and regularly gives concerts in her hometown Potsdam.

Highlights of the 2016/17 season include performances with the SWR Radio Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart under Antonello Manacorda (Mozart B-flat major) and the Orchestra of the National Theatre Mannheim under Alexander Soddy (Berg) as well as a tour with the Camerata Bern, during which she will celebrate her 50^th birthday with a concert at the Konzerthaus Berlin. Having been the Camerata Bern’s artistic director since the 2009/10 season, she is responsible for the ensemble’s musical profile, leading large works such as Beethoven’s symphonies, and recording music by Brahms, Mendelssohn and Beethoven.

The Arcanto Quartet, in which she performs with fellow violinist Daniel Sepec, violist Tabea Zimmermann and cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras, has been particularly important to Antje Weithaas as a chamber musician. Following their concerts at this year’s Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, the quartet is taking an extended sabbatical. In recent years, they have performed at Carnegie Hall in New York, Théâtre du Châtelet and Cité de la Musique in Paris, the Philharmonie in Berlin and the Konzerthaus Vienna, and have toured Israel, Japan and North America. They have released CDs on the label Harmonia Mundi of works by Bartók, Brahms, Ravel, Dutilleux, Debussy, Schubert and Mozart.

Antje Weithaas produced a reference recording of Beethoven and Berg’s violin concertos in 2013 with the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra under Steven Sloane (CAvi-music). There were rave reviews of the two first CDs from Antje Weithaas’ latest project for CAvi: complete recordings of Johann Sebastian Bach’s solo sonatas and partitas and Eugène Ysaÿe’s solo sonatas. The label cpo recently released Vol. 2 and 3 of her recordings of Max Bruch’s complete works for violin and orchestra with the NDR Radio Philharmonic under Hermann Bäumer to great acclaim. Antje Weithaas will continue her collaboration with the NDR Radio Philharmonic and cpo in the season of 16/17 with recordings of Schumann’s Violin Concerto and Brahms’ Double Concerto with Maximilian Hornung, both of which will be conducted by Andrew Manze.

Antje Weithaas began playing the violin at the age of four and later studied at the Hochschule für Musik “Hanns Eisler” Berlin with Professor Werner Scholz. She won the Kreisler Competition in Graz in 1987 and the Bach Competition in Leipzig in 1988, as well as the Hanover International Violin Competition in 1991. After teaching at the Universität der Künste Berlin, Antje Weithaas became a professor of violin at the Hochschule für Musik “Hanns Eisler” in 2004. She plays on a 2001 Peter Greiner violin.                                                                                                                       

2016/2017 season                                                                                                                      

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