Patricia Kopatchinskaja: Seeing the world through my eyes

Patricia Kopatchinskaja’s enthusiasm for music knows no boundaries: it can be highly complex and at the limits of the playable, like Arnold Schoenberg’s Violin Concerto, dark and bursting with intensity, like Karl Amadeus Hartmann’s Concerto funebre, or devoted to pure absurdity, as in a Late Night concert entitled “Nonsense in Residence”. The title alludes to the post of Artist in Residence, which Patricia Kopatchinskaja held with the Berliner Philharmoniker in the 2021/22 season.

Kopatchinskaja made her debut with the orchestra in September 2014 with the Violin Concerto by Peter Eötvös, conducted by the composer himself. This was followed by performances under the baton of chief conductors Kirill Petrenko and Sir Simon Rattle as well as several Late Night concerts. As part of her residency, the violinist, who also appears as a composer, created programmes with Kirill Petrenko, the Karajan Academy and members of the Berliner Philharmoniker.

In Katharina Bernstone’s film, the violinist, who comes from a family of musicians, talks about her childhood in a Moldovan village, her years of study in Vienna and her work together with Kirill Petrenko. The musician also describes how she found her approach to Schoenberg’s Violin Concerto by studying the challenging speaking and singing part of his Pierrot lunaire: a wonderful example of how Kopatchinskaja’s need for expression demands that she go beyond the limits of her own instrument – to see the world through her own eyes.

Patricia Kopatchinskaja