Violinist Ariadne Daskalakis was born of Greek parentage in Boston, USA. She grew up receiving rigorous academic training from Boston's Winsor School and violin lessons with Eric Rosenblith at the New England Conservatory Preparatory School. Highlights of her Boston years included performing the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto with the Boston Pops under Harry Ellis Dickson at age 16, being awarded the first Christa McAuliffe Memorial Medallion by Framingham State University and being selected to perform with Sir Yehudi Menuhin in Israel.
Ariadne Daskalakis went on to study at the Juilliard School in New York with Szymon Goldberg (a revered teacher who did not allow his students to perform publicly). She spent two years in New York and then transferred to Radcliffe College at Harvard University, where she received her BA with Honors in 1993. She spent her Junior year in Berlin, Germany, where she returned after finishing Harvard. In Berlin she drew from her academic training while dedicating herself wholly to discovering the European musical world. She entered the Hochschule der Kuenste Berlin, studying with Ilan Gronich and later with Thomas Brandis. There she earned two degrees, the Diplom and the Konzertexam, with the highest distinctions. Meanwhile, she was playing with the Ensemble Oriol Berlin, a dynamic young ensemble which worked primarily without a conductor. Appreciative of the Ensemble's unique work ethic under Ilan Gronich and Sebastian Gottschick as well as the superb guest artists like Christian Tetzlaff, Christine Schäfer and Andreas Staier, she soon became Concertmistress and one of the Ensemble's Leaders, finally becoming a frequent soloist herself.
Chamber music had always been a staple in her musical life since her lessons at NEC Prep School, and she saw the work with Ensemble Oriol in the same vein, just as she sees performing great violin concertos with orchestra today - the soloist being a vital yet organic part of the full score. In 1995 she founded the Manon Quartet Berlin with fellow colleagues Bernhard Forck (violin), Sebastian Gottschick (viola) and Anna Carewe (cello), and they went on to concertize throughout Europe and in the United States for over a decade, also recording two CD's for IPPNW-Concerts. A specialty of the Manon Quartet was to play baroque and classical music on period instruments. An avid sonata partner, she also gave frequent recitals with piano and, as she soaked up historical performance practice, with harpsichord.
Ariadne Daskalakis gained increasing recognition for her artistic prowess as a soloist in the late 1990's. Drawing from a wealth of inspiring influences, she developed her unique approach to sound production, crucial for easy projection and for alternating timbres according to different composers and musical contexts. Winning the First Prize of the Berlin Gyarfas Competition had enabled her to play a Stradivarius violin through the end of her studies, and she went on to win prizes at the International ARD Munich Competition in 1998 and the St. Louis Symphony Competition in 2000. In the same year she became the youngest full-tenured Violin Professor at the Hochschule fuer Musik Cologne. Further prizes were awarded to her from the Dortmund Mozart Society and the Harvard Music Association.
Consistently praised for her soulful, empassioned playing, her impeccable technique, her clear, ample and colorful tone and the strength of her communication, Ariadne Daskalakis has since appeared as soloist with many orchestras including the Symphony of the BR Munich, the Athens National State Orchestra, the Prague Chamber Orchestra, the English Chamber Orchestra, the Brno Philharmonic, the Cologne Chamber Orchestra, the Kammerakademie Potsdam and the Ensemble Oriol Berlin. Many of these performances were without conductor; others were led by esteemed colleagues including Dimitris Agrafiotis, Sergio Azzolini, Dennis Russell Davies, Michael Sanderling, Jörg-Peter Weigle and Sebastian Gottschick, her husband. Daskalakis concertized as soloist in venues like the Cologne Philharmonie, the Berlin Philharmonie Chamber Hall, Munich's Hercules Hall and Prinzregent Theatre, the Dortmund Konzerthaus, Athens' Megaron Hall, Prague's Rudolfinum, the Theatre du Champs-Elysées Paris and Boston's Jordan Hall. Festival appearances included the Ansbach Bach-Tage, the Berlin Festwochen, the Moritzburg Festival and the Tanglewood Music Center Festival. Summer 2009 saw her debut at Music From Salem and at the Kitzbühel (Austria) Summer Music Festival.
Ariadne Daskalakis' repertoire ranges from early baroque to modern, with a special emphasis on J.S. Bach, the Viennese Classics and the "2nd Viennese School". Works composed for her include Caspar Johannes Walther's Violin Concerto "Signs", which she performed under Sian Edwards for Musica Viva in Munich, and Christoph Coburger's work "Herr K and Frau N", a staged "Opera Mono" for solo violin with video installation. At the Contemporary Music Festival "Sound Encounters" in Boston she worked closely with composers Augusta Read Thomas and Kenji Bunch. She has also performed Luigi Nono's "Hay que Caminar" for 2 violins and Morton Feldman's famed 5-hour-long "2nd String Quartet", with the Manon Quartet Berlin. As baroque violinist she has collaborated with the Ensemble Selva della Musica and the Ensemble Vintage Cologne, which she founded with colleagues Ursula Schmidt-Laukamp (recorder), Rainer Zipperling (baroque cello, viola da gamba) and Gerald Hambitzer (harpsichord).
Ariadne Daskalakis recorded the complete Sonatas of Joseph Joachim Raff and Gabriel Fauré with pianist Roglit Ishay, on the labels Tudor and Carpe Diem. For the label Naxos she recorded works by Lutoslawski, Szymanowski and Janacek with pianist Miri Yampolsky, her partner at the ARD Competition. Ariadne Daskalakis' recording of Violin Concertos by Giuseppe Tartini with the Cologne Chamber Orchestra under Helmut Müller-Brühl was a Naxos CD of the month and a featured selection in the Strad magazine. Her next scheduled CD release will be of the complete Violin Sonatas by G.F. Händel, played on the baroque violin, also on the Naxos label.
August 2009
Active listening stimulates the brain...