Virtuoso Violinist Julia Fischer: A TV PORTRAIT

Julia Fischer, born in Munich, Germany, is of German-Slovakian parentage. Fischer began her studies before her fourth birthday, when she received her first violin lesson from Helge Thelen; a few months later she started studying the piano with her mother, Viera Fischer. Fischer said, "my mother's a pianist and I wanted to play the piano as well, but as my elder brother also played the piano, she thought it would be nice to have another instrument in the family. I agreed to try out the violin and stayed with it."[2] She began her formal violin education at the Leopold Mozart Conservatory in Augsburg, under the tutelage of Lydia Dubrowskaya. At the age of nine Julia Fischer was admitted to the Munich Academy of Music, where she continues to work with Ana Chumachenco. As a teenager she was inspired mostly by Glenn Gould and by Evgeny Kissin and Maxim Vengerov.[3] She has worked with internationally acclaimed conductors, such as Lorin Maazel, Christoph Eschenbach, Yakov Kreizberg, Yuri Temirkanov, Sir Neville Marriner, David Zinman, Zdeněk Mácal, Jun Märkl, Ruben Gazarian, Marek Janowski, Herbert Blomstedt, Michael Tilson Thomas and with a variety of top German, American, British, Polish, French, Italian, Swiss, Dutch, Norwegian, Russian, Japanese, Czech and Slovakian orchestras. Julia Fischer has performed in most European countries, the United States, Brazil and Japan; in concerts broadcast on TV and radio in every major European country, as well as on many US, Japanese and Australian radio stations.