"Antje Weithaas goes all out. Robert Schumann's first violin sonata, a work that could previously be understood as slightly melancholic and a beautiful contribution to domestic music-making, is interpreted by her as music full of loneliness and forlornness. Her ability to evoke hell with a single note immerses the music in the highest emotionality. She not only masters the entire spectrum of creative mastery – she also uses it mercilessly. And she has recently catapulted herself to the top (...) Antje Weithaas, and that's for sure, is not just a violinist, she is a musician, and currently one of the best." (German radio rbb Kultur, 13.12.2023)
With enthralling energy and a keen sense of nuance, Antje Weithaas repeatedly gives her audience a "great moment in music" (FAZ). Her wide stylistic range and unmistakable musical language are fascinating. Blessed with impressive technical mastery and an enormous sound palette, she accomplishes the feat of finding highly individual interpretations of the great masterpieces while remaining unpretentious in her service to the composer. In addition to the great concertos by Mozart, Beethoven and Schumann and new works such as Jörg Widmann's Violin Concerto, her wide-ranging concert repertoire also includes modern classics by Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Gubaidulina, as well as rarely performed violin concertos by composers such as Hartmann and Schoeck.
As a soloist, Antje Weithaas has already worked with orchestras such as the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, the major German radio orchestras, and international top orchestras such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony, the Philharmonia Orchestra, the BBC Symphony and the leading orchestras of the Netherlands, Scandinavia and Asia. Among the artists she has worked with on the podium are Vladimir Ashkenazy, Dmitrij Kitajenko, Sir Neville Marriner, Marc Albrecht, Yakov Kreizberg, Sakari Oramo and Carlos Kalmar.
In the 2023/24 season, Antje Weithaas, with Dénes Várjon as her piano partner, completed the complete recording of Ludwig van Beethoven's violin sonatas on CAvi-music, distributed digitally by Deutsche Grammophon, which was awarded the 2024 Annual Prize of the German Record Critics. After their debut recital at the Pierre Boulez Saal, she and Dénes Várjon will perform the complete cycle there in May 2025. They will also perform the complete cycle at the Casals Forum in Kronberg and in Budapest during the 2024/25 season, and they will give Beethoven recitals in Italy.
Antje Weithaas is a sought-after leader of "play-conduct" projects by international chamber orchestras. As artistic director of the Camerata Bern, she was responsible for the ensemble's musical profile for almost ten years, with whom she continues to work regularly and whose next joint recordings on CAvi-music are eagerly anticipated. From the concertmaster's stand, she even conducted large-scale works such as Beethoven's symphonies and released recordings of works by Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Mendelssohn and Beethoven. Her concerts as Artiste associé of the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris in the 2021/22 season led to several new projects.
In 2013, Antje Weithaas presented a benchmark recording of the Beethoven and Berg violin concertos with the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra under Steven Sloane (CAvi-music). The Arcanto Quartet's highly acclaimed recordings with Harmonia Mundi, with Daniel Sepec, Tabea Zimmermann and Jean-Guihen Queyras, include works by Bartók, Brahms, Ravel, Dutilleux, Debussy, Schubert and Mozart. In 2016, cpo released Antje Weithaas' complete recording of Max Bruch's works for violin and orchestra with the NDR Radiophilharmonie under Hermann Bäumer. There were also enthusiastic reactions to the complete recording of the solo sonatas and solo partitas by Johann Sebastian Bach and the solo sonatas by Eugène Ysaÿe, as well as Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto and his 3rd String Quartet in an orchestral version with the Camerata Bern (CAvi).
In 2019, two CDs were released: a recording of the Robert Schumann Violin Concerto and Johannes Brahms Double Concerto with the NDR Radiophilharmonie, cellist Maximilian Hornung and conductor Andrew Manze, which was awarded the BBC Music Magazine's "Concerto" Award, as well as a recording of the Violin Concerto and the Concert Rhapsody by Khachaturian with the Staatsorchester Rheinische Philharmonie and the conductor Daniel Raiskin. Antje Weithaas' 2024 digital release of Vasks' 2nd Violin Concerto "In Evening Light" with the Camerata Bern on Deutsche Grammophon shortens the wait for the next album, a Dvořák recording to be released in spring 2025.
Antje Weithaas began playing the violin at the age of four and a half. She later studied at the "Hanns Eisler" School of Music in Berlin under Professor Werner Scholz. In 1987 she won the Kreisler Competition in Graz, in 1988 the Bach Competition in Leipzig and in 1991 the International Joseph Joachim Violin Competition in Hannover, of whom she now shares the artistic directorship with Oliver Wille. For several years she taught as a professor at the Berlin University of the Arts; in 2004 she moved to the "Hanns Eisler" School of Music. Since then she has become a world-renowned violin teacher. Antje Weithaas plays an instrument made by Peter Greiner in 2001.