Naturalness and warmth, vitality, and the courage to take risks: These qualities are often used to describe Julia Hagen’s playing. The young cellist from Salzburg, offspring of a musical family, is just as convincing as a soloist with orchestra as she is in recital or in numerous chamber music constellations alongside prominent partners. The 28-year-old, who now lives in Vienna, combines technical mastery with high artistic standards and a direct, communicative approach to musicmaking.

 

Highlights of the 2023/24 season include concerts with the Dresdner Philharmonie under Krzysztof Urbański with a subsequent European tour, as well as Orquestra Metropolitana de Lisboa (Enrico Onofri), Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de Colombia (Jonathan Bloxham), Orquesta Nacional de España (Giovanni Antonini), Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra (Julian Rachlin) and Kammerakademie Potsdam (Paul McCreesh). She also returns to the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin under Andrés Orozco-Estrada and makes her debut with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France under Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla with concerts at the Philharmonie de Paris and Wiener Musikverein. Additional debuts take her on tour to Switzerland with the Wiener Symphoniker under their designated Principal Conductor, Petr Popelka, and to the Grafenegg Festival with the Brno Philharmonic under Dennis Russell Davies.

 

Amongst her many chamber music activities, her trio concerts with Igor Levit and Renaud Capuçon at the Schubertiade Schwarzenberg, London’s Wigmore Hall and Vienna’s Musikverein and her performances of Sofia Gubaidulina’s Canticle of the Sun with the Los Angeles Master Chorale at the Salzburger Festspiele are particularly worth mentioning. Other chamber music partners include Anneleen Lenaerts, Mao Fujita, Lukas Sternath, Nikolai Lugansky and Sir András Schiff.

 

Julia Hagen began playing the cello at the age of five. Her training with Enrico Bronzi in Salzburg and Reinhard Latzko in Vienna was followed by formative years in Heinrich Schiff’s Viennese class from 2013 to 2015, and finally by studies with Jens Peter Maintz at the University of the Arts in Berlin. As a Kronberg Academy scholarship holder, Hagen also studied with Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt until 2022. She was a prize winner of the Liezen International Cello Competition and the Mazzacurati Cello Competition and was awarded the Hajek-Boss-Wagner Culture Prize and the Nicolas Firmenich Prize of the Verbier Festival Academy as the best young cellist, among other prizes.
 

In 2019, she released her first album together with Annika Treutler with the two cello sonatas by Johannes Brahms on Hänssler Classic. Further recordings are in preparation. Julia Hagen plays an instrument by Francesco Ruggieri (Cremona, 1684), which is privately on loan to her.

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August 2023