New York–Bound Violin Sensation Patricia Kopatchinskaja Is Ready to Take a Bite of the Big Apple

By Greg Cahill | From the September-October issue of Strings Magazine

She’s been called the wild child of classical violin. And listening to Patricia Kopatchinskaja’s joyful, freewheeling klezmer trio, from her 2024 album Take 3 (with clarinetist Reto Bieri and pianist Polina Leschenko), it’s easy to hear why people detect a sense of wildness in this Moldovan-Austrian-Swiss musician. “I see growing up as an artist as rather counterproductive,” Kopatchinskaja, 47, says of her childlike abandon. “The open eyes of children, their naivety and discovering the world as nonjudgmentally as possible, naive and pure, that is actually the goal.”

As one of the world’s most accomplished violinists, Kopatchinskaja—popularly known as PatKop—has produced an impressive body of work both onstage and in the recording studio. Her playing can be, well, marvelously playful one moment and deeply poignant the next. “Kopatchinskaja’s playing is daring in her use of extreme dynamics, sometimes down to a spidery whisper,” Gramophone noted in its 2019 review of her riveting Time & Eternity album (with Camerata Bern). “She is never afraid to produce a harsh, uningratiating sound—the Concerto funebre is properly aggressive at times—but there is sweetness too.”

These days, PatKop is a highly sought-after music director and soloist. When Strings reached out to her publicist to arrange a trans-Atlantic phone interview to discuss her upcoming US tour with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, under Edward Gardner, she relayed the message that due to her busy schedule she would prefer to have the questions emailed. 

So, what had she been working on that week?

“I just made my project ‘Golden Decade’ in Dresden, Germany,” she noted a week later, referring to her concert series with the Dresdner Philharmonie, under Jonathan Stockhammer. Kopatchinskaja has served as the ensemble’s artist-in-residence this year. “Six violin concertos in three evenings: the Stravinsky, Prokofiev Two, Schoenberg, Berg, Hartmann, and Bartok Two, plus Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire. The six concertos were written within the decade between 1931–41, which always amazed me. I wanted to tell the audience about the pieces and then play them. Accompanying photos were shown behind me on a huge screen.”

It’s easy to see why the Royal Philharmonic Society in 2014 presented Kopatchinskaja with an annual award in the instrumental category, calling her an “irresistible force of nature: passionate, challenging, and totally original in her approach.”

So how does PatKop’s unflagging enthusiasm for music and her energetic playing style reflect her personality?

“Both are the same,” she notes succinctly.

Kopatchinskaja’s upcoming US tour launches October 9 at the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts in Davis, California. It is the LPO’s first multi-date stateside tour in ten years and will include Kopatchinskaja’s October 19 Carnegie Hall debut (it’s also LPO conductor Gardner’s Carnegie Hall debut). How is Kopatchinskaja preparing for that? “For me, every time is like the first and last. You never know,” she notes, with a whiff of fatalism. “That’s why I play as well as I possibly can every time, no matter where. A performance is about the music and the transmission of what you’re able to read and understand between the lines in the notes. 

“I assume that a priest also sees no difference whether he is praying in prison or in the Vatican.”

The personal and professional magnitude of the New York concert, playing in one of the world’s most respected venues, has not been lost on Gardner. “Carnegie Hall is one of the world’s iconic concert halls and a huge event in any artist’s calendar,” he says. “I think it’s doubly special that Pat and I will make our debuts together—that must be rare. The quality of sound in Carnegie Hall is unique, and the quality of the audience’s listening is incredibly intense. I experienced that from the orchestral stalls in many concerts over the years.”

Kopatchinskaja has high praise for the Gloucester-born Gardner, 49, who has been the LPO’s principal conductor since 2021. “I have had the pleasure of playing with the LPO many times. It is an exceptional, marvelous orchestra with great people and management,” Kopatchinskaja notes, “though with Ed I have played only once. It was—if you can say so—the world première of an arrangement of Moldovan composer George Enescu’s Third Violin Sonata for violin and orchestra. Ed knew every rubato and was able to anticipate all my liberties and really join in very musically, making colors and character. 

“He communicates with the orchestra on the same level and is at the service of the music.”

The respect is mutual. “Pat is a remarkable, passionate, intrepid artist,” Gardner says. “She always brings freshness and inspiration to the music she performs. And orchestras and conductors, when the relationship works, feed off this. As a conductor, you need to be a willing partner for Pat’s freedom and spontaneity, or you’ll just get left behind!”

The US tour will include Kopatchinskaja’s performances of Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1, Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4, Sibelius’ Symphony No. 5, and Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem. Additional programs will feature violin soloist Randall Goosby.

The Shostakovich, written during a period when the embattled Russian composer was subjected to a humiliating denunciation by the Soviet-era government for writing music that it deemed uncharacteristic of the Russian tradition, has special meaning for Kopatchinskaja, who has first-hand experience with Soviet repression. She was born in Chișinău, in the former Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (now the Republic of Moldova), 14 years before the political collapse of the Soviet Union. Her mother was a concert violinist, her father an accomplished cimbalom player. Perched to the northwest of the Black Sea, bordering war-torn Ukraine, Moldova is a neutral country with close ties to NATO. The small nation walks a political tightrope, especially since the secession of the Kremlin-friendly Moldavian region known as Transnistria, which hosts, it is believed, up to 1,500 Russian troops. The resulting political tension in her homeland, and her disdain for Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin, has informed Kopatchinskaja’s understanding of Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto, No. 1.

“I didn’t always like him,” she says of Shostakovich. “His pupil [the Russian composer] Galina Ustvolskaya made a much bigger impression on me. Her music and attitude as an artist are unparalleled. Shostakovich, on the other hand, was much simpler and more plakativ [striking]. The Violin Concerto No. 1 has a strong effect on the masses—it is clearly built and defined. I have never heard a bad performance of his violin concerto. You just have to play it, and it breaks your heart. You turn the page in a terrible time, see images of shock, despair, sarcasm, and macabre humor. It is a great piece, bringing to mind the ‘requiem’ of [the great Russian poetess] Anna Akhmatova—it gives me goose bumps and brings tears to my eyes. 

“The fact that nothing has been learnt from history, that an entire country has allowed itself to be brainwashed again by a despot, leaves even more horror and sadness in this music.”

And it’s no walk in the park—the Shostakovich requires quite a violinistic workout, with a second movement that has been described as demonic. How does Kopatchinskaja approach this piece onstage?“Every movement has its challenges,” she says. “The most important thing is to understand the meaning. In the second movement, I found the interaction with the orchestra challenging because I’m not particularly rhythmic, and the wind instruments are too far away, so you are totally dependent on the conductor. But even there, the coarse, sarcastic humor and sharpness is more important. You don’t want to hear a sterile étude there either.” 

And how does she rehearse for this complex work? “I need special stimuli, and they don’t come from finger exercises,” she notes. “Reading something about time [signatures] is sometimes enough to find a sound. But I don’t want to commit to too much, so that the concert always remains alive and speaks like a human being, always something new.”

What PatKop Plays

Patricia Kopatchinskaja plays a violin made in 1834 by Giovanni Francesco Pressenda of Turin, Italy. The fiddle is known for its dark, viola-like tone. For Baroque music, she plays a violin built c. 1780 by Ferdinando Gagliano of Naples. It is mounted with a lowered bridge and gut strings. She uses a Tourte bow.

A Tribute to Tania León

Kopatchinskaja won’t play every night on the upcoming US tour, but the London Phil has plenty of surprises in store. On October 10, at the Soraya in Northridge, California, the philharmonic will perform the US premiere of the symphonic Raíces (Origins) by Cuban-born, 2023–25 LPO composer-in-residence Tania León. Raíces is inspired by León’s own roots, including a mix of Spanish, Cuban, Chinese, and French heritage. León, 81, is the recipient of the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Music. “I had the privilege of Tania being in all our rehearsals when we performed the work in London earlier this year,” says LPO conductor Edward Gardner. “It’s a beautiful pointillist tone poem about the roots of language and culture—Tania is an incredibly open musician, and as a conductor herself is a great collaborator.”

The piece evokes a range of genres and moods, from contemplative to jovial, infusing elements of jazz, Cuban-style syncopation, and a vibrant blend of dance rhythms, reflecting the importance of dance to her own heritage and upbringing. “I would say it’s a different musical language from mine, and the LPO’s staple diet,” Gardner adds, “and it took time to get the music swinging in the way Tania wanted—sometimes our notation system is woefully inadequate!”

The program also includes Barber’s Violin Concerto and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4,performed by 28-year-old violinist Randall Goosby. —GC