Irina Simon-Renes

The violinist Irina Simon-Renes, a native of Romania, studied at the George Enescu Music School in Bucharest and in Germany with Thomas Zehetmair, Christoph Poppen, and Antje Weithaas. She was accepted into the Academy of the Staatskapelle Berlin in 1998; in 2000 she became principal second violin in the Hamburg State Orchestra, and from 2001 to 2010 she held the same position in the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. She was appointed to the Lucerne Festival Orchestra in 2013. She regularly appears as a guest artist with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, the Bavarian State Orchestra, and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and she is a principal second violin of the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra. Simon-Renes has directed the International Chamber Music Festival in Wassenaar, the Netherlands, since 2010; the city awarded her the Culture Prize in 2012. In 2020, the Romanian President Klaus Johannis appointed her a Knight in the Order of the Arts.

July 2023