Naturalness and warmth, vitality and the courage to take risks: these are qualities that are mentioned when Julia Hagen’s playing is being discussed. The young cellist from Salzburg, offspring of a musical family, is just as convincing as a soloist with orchestra as she is in recital with piano or in numerous chamber music constellations alongside prominent partners. The 27-year-old, who now lives in Vienna, combines technical mastery with high artistic standards and a directly communicative approach to music-making.

Highlights of the 2022/23 season include Julia Hagen’s return to the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla with Shostakovich’s Second Cello Concerto at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, performances of the Dvořák Cello Concerto with the Radio Symphony Orchestra Vienna, Orchestra della Svizzera italiana and Prague Symphony Orchestra as well as appearances with the Copenhagen Philharmonic, Bruckner Orchestra Linz or Sofia Philharmonic. Moreover, she will make her North American debut with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. As part of the Ouverture spirituelle, she will also perform Sofia Gubaidulina’s “Canticle of the Sun” at the 2023 Salzburg Festival.

Among her many chamber music activities are trio concerts with Igor Levit and Johan Dalene at London’s Wigmore Hall and at the Heidelberger Frühling, performances with the Quatuor Arod and the Hagen Quartet, and a tour of Japan in cello duo with Clemens Hagen. The young cellist makes longer stays at the Festspielfrühling Rügen, the chamber music festival of Aix-en-Provence, the Risør Festival as well as at Leif Ove Andsnes’s Rosendal Festival in Norway. Julia Hagen also has a regular collaboration with the Capuçon brothers. Renaud Capuçon is conductor and violin soloist of the Orchestre de Chambre Nouvelle-Aquitaine on a tour of Beethoven’s Triple Concerto; she meets Gautier in concerts with his “Capucelli” ensemble in Dortmund and Geneva.

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.