Michaela Girardi

This violinist from Salzburg received her musical education at the Mozarteum University, Salzburg, Indiana University in the USA and Lübeck Music College. Her teachers included Paul Roczek, Mauricio Fuks and Shmuel Ashkenasi. Michaela Girardi gave her first solo performance at the age of 11 with the Salzburg Symphony Orchestra. Since then, she has constantly appeared as a soloist with various orchestras such as the Camerata Salzburg, the Mozarteum Orchestra, the Bruckner Orchestra, Linz, the Nizhny Novgorod Philharmonic and the German Chamber Academy, Neuss.

However, her greatest passion is chamber music. She has been permanently influenced in this as a member of the Callino Quartet by her close collaboration with artists such as the Hagen Quartet, Eberhard Feltz, Walter Levin, György Kurtag and Erich Höbarth. Concert tours took Michaela Girardi to Wigmore Hall, the Chamber Music Festival in Bordeaux, Prussia Cove, the Viennese Concert Hall, the Beethoven Festival in Bonn and many other festivals in Europe with partners such as Jörg Widmann, Pekka Kuuisto, Barry Douglas and Nicholas Daniel. From an early age Michaela Girardi developed a strong affinity for contemporary music. With the Austrian Ensemble for New Music, the risonanze erranti Ensemble and Ensemble Plus she has worked closely with composers like Wolfgang Rihm, Peter Ruzicka, Helmut Lachenmann and Johannes Motschmann. Neos recently released a CD with works by Peter Ruzicka including a recording of his 5th string quartet “Sturz” (Fall).

Since 2008, Michaela Girardi has been the first violin in Camerata Salzburg and has met many interesting people such as Philippe Herreweghe, Roger Norrington, Leonidas Kavakos and Theodor Currentzis. As a concert master she regularly receives invitations for, among other things, her own orchestra – the Camerata Salzburg -  from the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra and the Vorarlberg Symphony Orchestra. Michaela Girardi teaches the violin and chamber music at the Mozarteum University, Salzburg and gives master classes at the Austrian Masterclasses and the China Conservatory in Beijing.