Benjamin Schmid & Musica Vitae
Biography Benjamin Schmid & Musica Vitae
Benjamin Schmid
Since his debut at the Salzburg Festival as solo partner of Sir Yehudi Menuhin in 1986, Benjamin Schmid has developed into one of the most important violinists of our time with his worldwide, constantly intensive concert activity in about 3000 live concerts.
The victory of the Carl Flesch Competition in London in 1992, where he was also awarded the Mozart, the Beethoven and the Audience Prize, brought the international breakthrough for the violinist Benjamin Schmid, who comes from Vienna, in addition to other competition prizes.
Since then he has appeared on the world's most important stages with renowned orchestras such as the Vienna Philharmonic, the Philharmonia Orchestra London, the Petersburg Philharmonic, the Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, the Leipzig Gewandthaus Orchestra and the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich. His soloistic quality, the extraordinary range of his repertoire - in addition to all the standard works, he also plays, for example, the violin concertos by Wolf Ferrari, Gulda, Korngold, Elgar, Weill, Dutilleux or Weinberg - and especially his improvisational skills in jazz make him a violinist with an incomparable profile.
Benjamin Schmid's more than 50 CDs have been honored, in some cases several times, with the German Record Prize (as the only violinist in the categories classical and jazz), the Echo Classic Prize, Grammophone Editor's Choice or the Strad Selection. In addition to recordings of the standard repertoire of violin concertos by Mozart, Beethoven, Bruch, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, Wieniawski or Brahms, his award-winning new discoveries of the violin concertos by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Ermanno Wolf Ferrari, Mieczyslaw Weinberg, Friedrich Gulda (violin and cello concerto) , György Ligeti, Nicolo Paganini - Kreisler and Max Reger deserve special mention.
On the occasion of his 50th birthday OehmsClassics released "Benjamin Schmid Complete OehmsClassics Recordings" (20 CD Box).
Benjamin Schmid has appeared several times with the Vienna Philharmonic in TV concerts broadcast worldwide: with Seiji Ozawa at the Salzburg Festival or with Valery Gergiev at the Schönbrunn Summer Night Concert; both have been released on CD and DVD by Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft and OehmsClassics. Several documentary films about Benjamin Schmid, broadcast worldwide, complete the violinist's exceptional standing.
In Salzburg, Austria, where he lives with his wife, the pianist Ariane Haering, and their four children, Benjamin Schmid dedicates himself as a professor and mentor to his students at the Mozarteum University, where he was awarded the "International Prize for Art and Culture", among other prizes. He also gives masterclasses worldwide, was professor and guest professor at the Hochschule der Künste Bern/CH and serves as jury chairman of the International Mozart Competition Salzburg.
As Artistic Director of the ClassixKempten music festival in Germany, he is responsible for a critically and audience acclaimed concert week in September that aims to present first-rate as well as rare chamber music and jazz concerts.
Beginning with the 2020/21 season, Benjamin Schmid has been appointed Artistic Director of the chamber orchestra Musica Vitae in Växjö, Sweden, where he is also planning a program profiled by classical and jazz influences, while also planning first CD recordings of new works written for Benjamin Schmid.
Finally, Benjamin Schmid is also artistic director of the orchestra Salzburger Orchester Solisten (SAOS) , with whom music of the 20th century is in the foreground.
Benjamin Schmid is portrayed as one of the most important violinists in the book "The Great Violinists of the 20th Century," by Jean-Michel Molkou (published by Buchet-Chastel, 2014).
He performs on the "ex Viotti 1718" Stradivarius violin made available to him by the Austrian National Bank, as well as on a modern violin made in 2015 by Wiltrud Fauler.
