Tabea Zimmermann

Tabea Zimmermann is the “artiste étoile” at the 2025 Summer Festival in Lucerne. Born in Lahr, Baden, in 1966, she began taking viola lessons at the age of three and studied with Ulrich Koch at the Freiburg University of Music starting in 1979 and with Sándor Végh at the Mozarteum in Salzburg in 1986-87. She won the Concours de Genève in 1982, the Concours Maurice Vieux in Paris in 1983, and the Budapest Music Competition in 1984 and was immediately engaged as a soloist by many renowned orchestras. Zimmermann has been artist in residence with such ensembles as the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Berliner Philharmoniker, and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and has been Artistic Partner of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra since 2022. In addition to her solo performances, she is dedicated to chamber music and performs with such colleagues as clarinetist Jörg Widmann, pianist Javier Perianes, and the Belcea Quartet. Contemporary music is another focus of her work. Many new scores have been written especially for her, including works by György Ligeti, Heinz Holliger, Wolfgang Rihm, Georges Lentz, Enno Poppe, and Michael Jarrell. Zimmermann is deeply committed to the work of Paul Hindemith, not least as president of the Hindemith Foundation, and has been honored with the Paul Hindemith Prize of the City of Hanau. She has also received the Frankfurt Music Prize, the Hessian Culture Prize, the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, and, in 2023, an honorary membership in the German Music Council. Since 2023, she has also chaired the board of trustees of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, which had awarded her the Siemens Music Prize three years earlier. Zimmermann was appointed  a professor at the Saarbrücken University of Music when she was only 21, and in 1994 she transferred to Frankfurt. After a 20-year tenure at the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music in Berlin, she returned to teach at the Frankfurt Uni­versity of Music and Performing Arts in 2023. She also shares her passion for music at the Kronberg Academy.

Lucerne Festival debut on 3 September 2019 playing Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Viola and Orchestra with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by Tugan Sokhiev.

July 2025