Patricia Kopatchinskaja

Patricia Kopatchinskaja (born 1977 in Chișinău, Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, Soviet Union) is a Moldovan-Austrian violinist.

Kopatchinskaja comes from a family of musicians, where her parents were both musicians with the state folk ensemble of Moldova, with her mother Emilia Kopatchinskaja a violinist and her father Viktor Kopatchinsky a cimbalom player. While her parents were on concert tour through the former Eastern bloc, she grew up with her grandparents. She started playing the violin at age 6.

In 1989, the family emigrated to Vienna. Kopatchinskaja entered the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna at age 17, where she studied musical composition and violin. At age 21, she won a scholarship to study in Bern, at the Musikhochschule, where her teachers included Igor Ozim.

Kopatchinskaja has played with almost all important European orchestras including Vienna, Berlin and London Philharmonic. She regularly plays in Japan and Australia and recently also extended her activiy to the United States, South America, Russia and China. In February 2014, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra named Kopatchinskaja one of its new Artistic Partners, effective with the 2014-2015 season. And in 2020 she will serve as artistic director of the Ojai Music Festival in the USA.

Kopatchinskaja, her Swiss neurologist husband, and their daughter live in Bern, Switzerland. She plays a violin built by Giovanni Francesco Pressenda (Turin) in 1834.

Patricia Kopatchinskaja has collaborated with Il Giardino Armonico, the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, MusicAeterna Perm, the Orchestre des Champs-Élysées, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment under the direction of Giovanni Antonini, René Jacobs and Philippe Herreweghe.

On 23 April 2016 she performed with Anoushka Shankar at a concert in Konzerthaus Berlin, Germany.

Kopatchinskaja gave first performances of numerous works, e.g.:

• 2004/5 seven first performances, among them violin concertos dedicated to her by Johanna Doderer and Otto Zykan
• 2005/6 first performances of violin concertos dedicated to her by Gerald Resch and Gerd Kühr with the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra
• 2007/8 first performances of violin concertos dedicated to her by Jürg Wyttenbach and the Turkish composer/pianist Fazil Say
• 2009 first performance of the violin concerto dedicated to her by Faradj Karajew
• 2011 first performance of violin concertos dedicated to her by Maurizio Sotelo and Helmut Oehring ("Four seasons") as well as the work "Oh whispering suns" for double choir, solo violin and cymbal by Vanessa Lann
• 2012 first performance of the Romance for violin and strings dedicated to her by Tigran Mansurian with Amsterdam Sinfonietta.
• 2014 first performance of her own violin concerto "Hortus animae" with Camerata Bern.
• 2015 (August) first performance of «Dialogue», concerto for Violin, Cello and Orchestra by Mark-Anthony Turnage (with Sol Gabetta and Gstaad Festival Orchestra).
• 2015 (November) first performance of the violin concerto written for her by the American composer Michael Hersch with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra.
• 2016 first performance of Mauricio Sotelo's "Red Inner Light Sculpture" for Solo Violin, Strings, percussion and Flamenco Dancer (commissioned by P.K.)

Moreover, Richard Carrick, Violeta Dinescu, Michalis Economou, Heinz Holliger, Ludwig Nussbichler, Jorge Sánchez-Chiong, Ivan Sokolov, Boris Yoffe have written works for her.

• 2000: 1st prize in the International Henryk Szeryng Competition in Mexico
• 2002: Credit Suisse Young Artist Award
• 2004: New Talent – SPP Award of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU)
• 2006: Deutschlandfunk-award of the Bremer Musikfest
• 2008: Award of the music commission Kanton Bern, Switzerland
• 2009: ECHO in the category chamber music for the CD recorded with Fazil Say (works by Beethoven, Ravel, Bártok & Say)
• 2010: BBC-Music-Magazine award (orchestral category) for the CD recorded with Philippe Herreweghe and the Orchestre des Champs Elysees: Collected works for violin and orchestra by Beethoven
• 2011: "Golden Bow"-award of the Meiringen music festival, Switzerland
• 2012: Praetorius music award of the county Niedersachsen, Germany in the category "musical innovation"
• 2013: ECHO in the category concert recording of the year (20th/21st century/violin) for the double-CD with violin concertos by Bartók, Ligeti and Eötvös, recorded with the hr-Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt respectively Ensemble Modern under Peter Eötvös (Naive)
• 2013: Gramophone Award "Recording of the year" and Grammy-nomination, both for the double-CD with violin concertos by Bartók, Ligeti and Eötvös, recorded with the hr-Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt respectively Ensemble Modern under Peter Eötvös (Naive)
• 2014: International Classical Music Awards (Category Concerto) for the double CD with violin concertos by Bartók, Ligeti and Eötvös
• 2014: Prix Caecilia (Belgium) for the CD with violin concertos by Stravinsky and Prokofjev recorded with London Philharmonic Orchestra and Vladimir Jurowski (Naive)
• 2014: Royal Philharmonic Society Music Awards 2013 (Category instrumentalist)
• 2016: Music Award of the Canton of Bern, Switzerland for "remarkable musical achievements"

• "パトリシア・コパチンスカヤ：avex-CLASSICS". avex.jp. Retrieved 2015-11-12. 
• Violinistin Kopatchinskaja erhält "Förderpreis" auf radiobremen.de (archived in Internet Archive on 17 May 2010), checked on 19 March 2014