Patricia Kopatchinskaja

Violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja is an unusually versatile musician, active in both mainstream repertory and the historical performance scene. She has also played contemporary music and has given at least a dozen world premieres. Kopatchinskaja was born in Chisinau, then in the Moldavian Socialist Republic of the Soviet Union, in 1977. Her mother, a violinist, and her father, a percussionist, both played in a regional state folk music ensemble. Kopatchinskaja took up the violin at six, studying with a local teacher who had been a student of David Oistrakh. When she was 17, h...