Portrait
Kathrin ten Hagen, Violinist
Violinist Kathrin ten Hagen is characterized by the virtuosity and the passion of her playing. The Aachener Zeitung described the »moving purity, tonal expressiveness and technical perfection« of her interpretations. Kathrin ten Hagen performed her debut with the Nürnberger Symphoniker at the age of 14. Since then, she has appeared with the Deutsche Symphonieorchester Berlin, the Hamburger Symphoniker, the Klassik Philharmonie Hamburg, the Moscow Symphony Orchestra, the USC Symphony Orchestra, the Chamber Orchestra of the Republic of Belarus, the Kammersymphonie Leipzig and Arcata Stuttgart. She performs a wide array of repertoire and has toured through Argentina, Uruguay, Russia, the Ukraine, Europe, China and the USA. She has been invited to play at the Schleswig-Holstein Musikfestival, the Rheingau Musik Festival, the Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the Zermatt Festival and the Yellow Barn Festival in the USA. Her CDs "Eastern Impressions", "Musique Romantique" and "Northern Lights" have been highly acclaimed. Ms. ten Hagen has played in concert halls such as the Eurogress Aachen, the Tonhalle Duesseldorf, the Laeiszhalle Hamburg, the Liederhalle Stuttgart, the Berliner Philharmonie, the Jordan Hall in Boston, the Weill-Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall and the California Center for the Arts. Her concerts have been broadcasted by Deutschland Radio, WDR 3 and Bayern 4 Klassik.
In October 2018 Kathrin ten Hagen was appointed professor for violin at the University of Music FRANZ LISZT Weimar. She also teaches at the University of Music and Theatre “Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy" Leipzig. Kathrin ten Hagen has worked as Teaching Assistant for Donald Weilerstein at the New England Conservatory and regularly gives solo and chamber music master classes at the International Euro Music Festival, the Talent Music Summer Courses & Festival Brescia, the Stuttgart International Music Week and at her own Classic Festival Jülich “!MPRESS!ONS" in Germany. She has also taught at the Young Artist Program of the Yellow Barn Festival in the USA, at the International Music Academy Chernihiv and the Festival Amici della Musica di Lucera/Italy. Furthermore, she serves as concert master of Freies Orchester Leipzig.
Kathrin ten Hagen won the first prize at the Donald Portnoy International Violin Competition in Augusta/Georgia in 2009. She was also the first prize winner at the California International Young Artists Competition 2007 in Escondido/San Diego. Her other awards include first prizes at the International Wolfgang Marschner Competition 2005, the Ibolyka Gyarfas Competition 2002 and the German Youth Competition Jugend Musiziert. Furthermore, she is an honoree of the Corpus Christi International Competition in Texas, the International MaxRostal-Competition and the Ruggiero Ricci Competition. Already at the age of 14, she won the second prize and the Mozart-prize at the International Yfrah-Neaman-Competition as well as the second prize at the Jakob-Stainer-Competition. She was a scholarship holder of Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben, the Zeit-Stiftung and the Ottilie-Selbach-Redslob-Stiftung.
Ms. ten Hagen is a passionate chamber musician and a member of the TenHagen Quartett. She has performed with Gerald Fauth, Wolfgang Manz, Konrad Engel, Peter Frankl, Riccardo Bovino, Silke Avenhaus, Ulf Tischbirek, Gustav Rivinius, Wen-Sinn Yang and the Hyperion Trio. In both the USA and Germany, Ms. ten Hagen commits herself to outreach concerts in order to further broaden the classical music audience. Contemporary music is a particular interest of Kathrin ten Hagen. Alongside the repertoire of the classical modernists, she plays a broad range of works written after 1970 by composers such as Henze, Lutoslawski, Marschner, Balassa, Suslin, Widmann, Yun and Zimmermann, and she works together with composers such as Stefano Taglietti, Kurt Hauschild, Dorothee Eberhardt and Edgar Mann. In the Ruggiero Ricci Competition in 2007, she received a special prize for the interpretation of the contemporary work Etude IV by Joerg Widmann.
Kathrin ten Hagen studied with Antje Weithaas in Berlin, with Igor Ozim in Salzburg and, as a scholarship holder of the DAAD, with Donald Weilerstein at the New England Conservatory in Boston, where she was awarded her degree Master of Music with honors in 2009 and the Graduate Diploma in 2010. She received additional training in international masterclasses with Thomas Brandis, Zakhar Bron, Robert Mann, Wolfgang Marschner and Christian Tetzlaff.