With a combination of depth, brilliance and humour, Patricia Kopatchinskaja brings an unmatched theatricality to her performances. Whether in a traditional violin concerto or an original staged project, her distinctive approach always reaches the heart of a work. The violinist has worked worldwide with leading orchestras and conductors and appears regularly at festivals such as the Lucerne Festival, the Ojai Music Festival and the Salzburg Festival.
Highlights in 2025/26 have included opening the season with the Staatskapelle Berlin, her debut with The Cleveland Orchestra and performances in an Artist Portrait with the London Symphony Orchestra. Her schedule has also included the staged projects Dies irae and Les Adieux, Stefano Gervasoni’s violin concerto Tacet at the ManiFeste Festival in Paris and — a personal milestone as a composer — her own double concerto Five Dreams at the Lucerne Festival Forward. She also remains artistic partner of the SWR Symphony Orchestra, with whom she has realized projects such as The Peace Project.
Patricia Kopatchinskaja was an associate artist with the SWR Experimentalstudio, curated the festival Golden Decade, and has also been Artist in Residence with the Berlin Philharmonic and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, and at the Prague Spring International Music Festival, London’s Southbank Centre, the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Philharmonie Essen and the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie.
As a boundary-crosser, she readily embraces the challenges of musical experimentation. She has performed numerous works by living composers, such as Aureliano Cattaneo, Francisco Coll, Luca Francesconi, Stefano Gervasoni, Michael Hersch, Márton Illés, György Kurtág and Esa-Pekka Salonen.
Her discography comprises more than thirty recordings, among them the Grammy-winning album Death and the Maiden with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Les Plaisirs illuminés with Sol Gabetta and Camerata Bern (BBC Music Magazine Award), Le monde selon George Antheil with Joonas Ahonen, Maria Mater Meretrix with Anna Prohaska and violin sonatas by Brahms, Janáček and Bartók with Fazıl Say (Gramophone Editor’s Choice). Following her album Take Two, in 2024 she joined forces with Reto Bieri and Polina Leschenko for Take 3.
Patricia Kopatchinskaja is a humanitarian ambassador for terre des hommes and in 2017 was awarded the Swiss Grand Award for Music.
