Mirjam Tschopp

Since her debut as a soloist at thirteen, Mirjam Tschopp (born in Zurich in 1976) has enjoyed a varied international career as violinist and viola player, with both instruments featuring equally in her activities.

Her focus of interest is the music of the past hundred years. She works closely with living composers, and has premiered numerous works, many dedicated to her or written for her. In 2003 in Cologne, she gave the acclaimed first performance of Nicolas Bacri’s 3rd Violin Concerto, specially written for her, with the WDR Symphony Orchestra under Semyon Bychkov. She received outstanding reviews in the international media for her recordings of the violin and viola concertos by Ahmed Adnan Saygun, which appeared in 2005 and 2007 under the label cpo. It is also planned the recording of the violin concertos of Ernest Bloch and Ulvi Cemal Erkin.

She appears as a soloist with such orchestras as the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne, the Berliner Symphonics, the Dresden Philharmonic, the Camerata St. Petersburg, the National Symphony Orchestra of Argentina, the Brandenburgisches Staatsorchester, the Mecklenburgische Staatskapelle and the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, and has worked with conductors such as Semyon Bychkov, Pinchas Steinberg, Howard Griffiths, Ari Rasilainen, Gürer Aykal, Shao-Chia Lü and Edmond de Stoutz. Passionately fond of chamber music, she has made a name for herself in ensembles including Anne-Sophie Mutter, Josef Suk, Julian Milkis and Peter-Lukas Graf.

She has performed in the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, the Wigmore Hall London, the Kosciuszko Foundation New York, the Grosse Musikhalle Hamburg, the Philharmonie Köln, the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, the Glazunov-Hall in St. Petersburg, the Rudolfinum in Prague, the Finlandia Concert Hall in Helsinki, the Tonhalle Zurich and at the Festivals of Lucerne, Gstaad, Lyon and Davos. Between 1994 and 1998, producer Adrian Marthaler portrayed her in numerous productions for Swiss TV.

The only prizewinner of the 2000 Max Rostal Viola Competition in Berlin, winner of the special prize at the Curci Violin Competition in Naples in 2006, finalist in the «Concert Artist Guild International Competition» in New York and recipient of the «Swiss Ambassador’s Award», she was supported by the Society of Friends of the Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation.

Mirjam Tschopp studied violin with Aïda Stucki Piraccini and Franco Gulli and viola with Christoph Schiller. Further studies took her to Thomas Brandis, Rainer Kussmaul and Herman Krebbers. Shortly after her linguistic Matura, she passed her teaching, concert and soloist diplomas with distinction.

Since 2007, Mirjam Tschopp holds a teaching post for violin and viola at the Tiroler Landeskonservatorium Innsbruck and gives international master classes. She is active in the school-project "Rhapsody in School" and is a jury member at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Lyon and of the Swiss Youth Music Competition.