Kolja Blacher

Kolja Blacher, who was born in 1963 in Berlin, studied violin with Dorothy DeLay in New York and Sándor Vegh in Salzburg. In 1986 he began his solo career and has performed with the Berlin, Oslo, St. Petersburg, and Munich Philharmonics, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. In recent years he has concentrated on performing both as soloist and conductor, appearing in this capacity with the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. He has performed chamber music with pianists Bruno Canino, Kirill Gerstein, and Vassily Lobanov, violist Wolfram Christ, and cellist Clemens Hagen. His discography includes recordings of violin concertos by Berg and Stravinsky under the direction of Claudio Abbado. Blacher, who teaches as a professor at the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music in Berlin, plays a Stradivari from 1730.

August 2011