Kolja Blacher, violin
Kolja Blacher studied with Koji Toyoda, then at the Juilliard School of Music with Dorothy DeLay and with Sandor Vegh in Salzburg. He has performed as a soloist throughout the world with orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic, Munich Philharmonic, NDR Symphony, Gewandhaus Leipzig, Orchestra di Santa Cecilia, and the Baltimore Symphony. He has worked with conductors such as Kirill Petrenko, Vladimir Jurowski, Dimitri Kitajenko, Mariss Jansons, Matthias Pintscher, Markus Stenz, Simone Young and Asher Fish.
Blacher’s programmatic spectrum includes solo violin works from Bach to Berio, the basic classical-romantic repertoire, and contemporary music for violin and orchestra (including works by Magnus Lindberg, Kurt Weill, Hans Werner Henze and Bernd Alois Zimmermann).
Over the past five years, the “Play-Conduct” concerts have become the new focus of Blacher’s artistic activities. He has worked regularly with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, the Taiwan Philharmonic Orchestra, the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra of the Komische Oper in Berlin.
As a conductor, he will lead all the concerts of the chamber orchestra of the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano, “Giuseppe Verdi”, in the next seasons.
With the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, he will be soloist and conductor for a residency in 2023/2024.
He works regularly as a conductor and soloist with the Nordic Chamber Orchestra (Sweden), Norrlands Opera (Sweden), South Denmark Philharmonic, Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland Pfalz, and many others.
Blacher has recorded highly acclaimed CDs (e.g. Diapason d’Or) in collaboration with Claudio Abbado, with whom he has maintained a close relationship since their time at the Berlin Philharmonic and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra. His CD with Schönberg’s Violin Concerto (with Markus Stenz and the Gürzenich-Orchester Köln) was released in fall 2013.
Kolja Blacher was a professor at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg before returning to his native Berlin, where he teaches at the Hochschule für Musik “Hanns Eisler.” Born in Berlin – her father was the Baltic German composer Boris Blacher – Kolja Blacher lives with her family in Berlin.
He plays a 1730 Guaneri del Gesu violin, generously loaned by Mrs. Kimiko Powers.
photographic credits:
Josef Fischnaller Warner Classics