Julia Fischer

Her father, Frank-Michael Fischer, a mathematician from East Germany, also moved from Eastern Saxony to West Germany in 1972.

In addition to German, Fischer is also fluent in English and French.

Fischer started playing the violin before her fourth birthday and received her first lesson from Helge Thelen.

A few months later, she began taking piano lessons from her mother.

Fischer once said, "My mother is a pianist and I wanted to play the piano as well, but since my elder brother also played the piano, I thought it would be nice to learn another instrument. I agreed to try out the violin and stayed with it."

Fischer also supports her mother's belief that musical education of any kind should include piano fundamentals to extend one's repertoire and knowledge of harmony, theory, and style.

At the age of eight, she began her formal violin education at the Leopold Mozart Conservatory in Augsburg, under the tutelage of Lydia Dubrowskaya.

When she was nine years old, she was admitted to the Munich University of Music and Performing Arts, where she worked with Ana Chumachenco.

When she was twelve years old she played Beethoven's Violin Concerto for the first time in her mother's home town in East Slovakia, and later played it again with Yehudi Menuhin in Vienna.

Beethoven was also her mother's and brother's favourite composer.

Fischer's parents divorced when she was thirteen.

As a teenager she was inspired by Glenn Gould, Evgeny Kissin, and Maxim Vengerov.

Two competitions defined Fischer's early career as a professional violinist.

Julia Fischer (born 15 June 1983) is a German classical violinist and pianist.

She teaches at the Munich University of Music and Performing Arts and performs up to 60 times per year.

Julia Fischer is of German-Slovak ancestry.

Her parents met as students in Prague.

Her mother is Viera Fischer (née Krenková).

Lorin Maazel, chief conductor of the Munich-based Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra from 1993 to 2002, was Fischer's mentor since 1997.

He used to perform in a concert with Fischer at least once a year.

The most prestigious competition Fischer won was the 1995 International Yehudi Menuhin Violin Competition, which took place in Folkestone under the supervision of Yehudi Menuhin.

Her performance earned her first prize in the junior category as well as all of the special prizes, including the Bach prize for the best solo performance of the composer's work.

Music journalist Edward Greenfield said, "I first heard Julia Fischer in 1995 as a 12-year-old in the Yehudi Menuhin Violin Competition. Not only did she win outright in the junior category, but she was manifestly more inspired than anyone in the senior category."

Her teacher in Munich, Ana Chumachenco, kept Fischer down to earth by making her practise difficult pieces of Sarasate.

In 1996, she won another major contest, the Eighth Eurovision Competition for Young Instrumentalists in Lisbon, which was broadcast in 22 countries.

Maazel made Fischer perform as a soloist with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra first at the Bad Kissingen festival and then, in March 2000, in Munich, where the competition was fierce.

Fischer started her career early, although she attended school (the Gymnasium) up to the age of 19, learning mathematics and physics as well as music, and passed the Abitur in spring 2002.

She has been giving concerts since she was 11 and started teaching as a violin professor at 23.

Fischer has worked with many internationally acclaimed conductors, such as Simon Rattle, Lorin Maazel, Christoph Eschenbach, Yakov Kreizberg, Yuri Temirkanov, Sir Neville Marriner, David Zinman, Zdeněk Mácal, Jun Märkl, Ruben Gazarian, Marek Janowski, Herbert Blomstedt, and Michael Tilson Thomas.

She has also worked with a variety of top German, American, British, Polish, French, Italian, Swiss, Dutch, Norwegian, Russian, Japanese, Czech, and Slovak orchestras.

She has performed in most European countries, the United States, Brazil and Japan.

Her concerts have been broadcast on TV and radio in every major European country and many have been featured on U.S., Japanese, and Australian radio stations.

2003 was a pivotal year in Fischer's career, including her Carnegie Hall debut, when she received standing ovations for her performance of Brahms' Double Concerto with Lorin Maazel and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.

In 2003 Fischer also performed for the first time with the Berlin Philharmonic under Lorin Maazel as well as with the London Symphony Orchestra.

Despite the added complication of the programme change two weeks before the concert, from the Beethoven violin concerto to the Bartók violin concerto, which Fischer had never played before, she mastered it.

Following numerous performances in the U.S. over the previous six years, in 2003 Fischer also performed with the New York Philharmonic under the baton of Lorin Maazel, playing the Sibelius Violin Concerto in New York's Lincoln Center, as well as the Mendelssohn Violin concerto in Vail, Colorado.

She has toured with Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, Herbert Blomstedt and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the Dresden Philharmonic.

In 2006, Fischer was appointed as a professor at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts.

She was Germany's youngest professor at the time.

In fall of 2011, Fischer took over her former teacher Ana Chumachenco's chair at the Munich University of Music and Performing Arts.