Antoine Tamestit

Born in 1979, French violist Antoine Tamestit studied with Jean Sulem at the Paris Conservatoire, Jesse Levine at Yale University, and Tabea Zimmermann at the Hanns Eisler School of Music in Berlin. His career began with four prestigious competition victories: in 2000 and 2001, he won the Concours Maurice Vieux in Paris and the Primrose International Viola Competition in Chicago, followed by the Young Concert Artists Auditions in New York in 2003 and the ARD International Music Competition in 2004, where he also received the Audience Prize and two special prizes. In 2008, he received the generously endowed Credit Suisse Young Artist Award, which included a performance with the Vienna Philharmonic at Lucerne Festival. He has since appeared with the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, and the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich. In the 2026–27 season, Tamestit is artist-in-residence with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Curating Artist at the Konzerthaus Dortmund, where he will also perform with the Orchestre de Paris under Klaus Mäkelä. He will tour with the WDR Symphony Orchestra and Marie Jacquot, appear with the Staatskapelle Berlin, and perform Francesco Filidei’s Viola Concerto with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, and the NHK Symphony Orchestra. Tamestit is deeply committed to contemporary music and has given the world premieres of works by Jörg Widmann, Thierry Escaich, Olga Neuwirth, and his father, Gérard Tamestit. His chamber music partners include Emanuel Ax, Martin Fröst, Leonidas Kavakos, Emmanuel Pahud, and Yuja Wang. His most recent recording, released in the summer of 2026, features the complete Bartók duos with violinist Alexandra Preucil. Tamestit has received numerous awards for his recordings and was honored with the City of Hanau’s Paul Hindemith Prize in 2022. He plays a viola made by Antonio Stradivari in 1672.

Lucerne Festival debut on 12 August 2006 in a chamber music featuring works by Brahms and Mendelssohn; last appearance here was on 9 September 2023, when he was the soloist in Hindemith’s Schwanendreher Concerto with the Staatskapelle Dresden under Christian Thielemann.

September 2026