Arabella Steinbacher
Arabella Steinbacher
01 September 2007
SHE’S ALREADY WON OVER EUROPE, AND THIS FALL SHE’S POISED TO TAKE THE STATES BY STORM. VIOLINIST ARABELLA STEINBACHER IS ONE TO WATCH, SAYS FEMKE COLBORNE
Picture © Robert Vano
Making your US orchestral debut is a dream for most young musicians, but for Arabella Steinbacher it just wasn't good enough. Not only is the Munich-born violinist making her concerto debut on these shores this fall with a performance of the Sibelius Violin Concerto - she's doing it with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
'I'm extremely happy about it,' says the 26-year-old with typical German matter-of-factness. Speaking from her hotel on the French Côte d'Azur, where she is taking a break before the start of the new season, Steinbacher is clearly not in the mood for getting over-excited.
But when she found herself standing in at short notice for Kyung-Wha Chung in a performance of the Beethoven Violin Concerto with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France in Paris three years ago, it was a different story. Although she had already started to make a name for herself in her native Germany, Steinbacher had yet to make an impression on the international stage. She knew the performance could make or break her career.
'When I got the message I was very nervous but when I was on stage I was fine, I just tried to concentrate on the music'
'Of course it was very exciting,' she says. 'I got this message three days before the concert, and it was a live broadcast. When I got the message I was very nervous but when I was on stage I was fine, I just tried to concentrate on the music. It was a great experience.'
It turned out to be the performance of a lifetime, garnering whoops of excitement from the French audience and rave reviews from the critics: 'It is doubtful that a single violin performance recently has been as moving and as exceptional as the concert debut of the Munich violinist Arabella Steinbacher,' said the Stuttgarter Zeitung.
Until that performance, Steinbacher's career had been limited to small-scale concerts and recitals around Germany and local prizes like the Joseph Joachim Violin Competition in Hanover. 'I already had an agent but that performance definitely helped me to get concerts in other countries,' she admits.
