Patricia Kopatchinskaja’s focus is to get to the heart of the music, to its meaning for us – now and here. With a combination of depth, brilliance and humour, she brings an inimitable sense of theatrics to her music. Described by The New York Times as "a player of rare expressive energy and disarming informality, of whimsy and theatrical ambition", Patricia Kopatchinskaja always conveys the essence of a work with her distinctive approach, whether in a fresh interpretation of a violin repertoire classic or through one of her original staged projects that cross musical, theatrical, and interdisciplinary boundaries.
A visionary who thrives on experimentation and collaboration, she describes contemporary music as her lifeblood. Her artistic partnerships with living composers such as Francisco Coll, Luca Francesconi, Michael Hersch, Márton Illés, György Kurtág, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Aureliano Cattaneo have resulted in numerous world premieres. She directs staged concerts at venues on both sides of the Atlantic and collaborates with leading orchestras, conductors, and festivals worldwide.
In the 2026/27 season, Patricia Kopatchinskaja appears with the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra in Oslo and at the BBC Proms. Her other orchestral partners include the Wiener Symphoniker, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Konzerthausorchester Berlin and the Rotterdam Philharmonic. She tours France and Germany with Les Siècles and Maxim Emelyanychev and leads the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra and the Real Filharmonía de Galicia as both soloist and conductor. With Sol Gabetta she undertakes a duo tour to Taiwan, China, Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong, and with Fazıl Say she gives recitals in Italy, Spain, Germany and Switzerland. The season closes with her staged concert project "Prometheus – Ignition of the World" with Ensemble Resonanz in Hamburg, Rotterdam and Vienna.
In 2025/26 she performed the world premiere of the new version of "Five Dreams", her double concerto for violin and cello at the Forward Festival in Lucerne and gave her debut with the Cleveland Orchestra. Two of her signature staged projects featured prominently that season: "Dies irae (Day of Wrath)", a provocative, semi-staged performance responding to global collapse, resource wars and the refugee crisis, and "Les Adieux", which confronts the rapid deterioration of the natural world.
In recent seasons, Patricia Kopatchinskaja has curated major residencies at London’s Southbank Centre, the Wiener Konzerthaus (where she is the youngest honorary member of the Konzerthausgesellschaft), the Philharmonie Essen and the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, as well as with the Berliner Philharmoniker, the SWR Symphonieorchester and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. In 2024, she appeared with the Dresdner Philharmonie at the "Golden Decade" festival on three consecutive evenings, performing six major modernist violin concertos. Further highlights included "Songs and Fragments", a Barrie Kosky production at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence in which she appeared alongside soprano Anna Prohaska, and a daring musical experiment with Herbert Fritsch: the neo-Dada opera production "Vergeigt" at Theater Basel.
Patricia Kopatchinskaja also performs as a vocalist, in Ligeti’s "Mystères du macabre" and in Schoenberg’s "Pierrot lunaire", in which she takes on the role of Pierrot herself, as well as in her project presenting Kurt Schwitters’ sound poem "Ursonate" as a film in the style of Dada. She was also an associate artist of the SWR Experimentalstudio, one of the world’s leading centres for electronic music research.
In the 2024/25 season, she marked Schoenberg’s 150th birthday with performances of his monumental Violin Concerto with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Wiener Symphoniker, the Dresdner Philharmonie, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, to name but a few. As part of the anniversary celebrations, she also performed "Pierrot lunaire" at the Palau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona in 2025, 100 years to the day after Schoenberg himself conducted the work there.
Patricia Kopatchinskaja’s discography includes over 30 recordings, among them Grammy award-winning "Death and the Maiden" with Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, a project which was also re-created as a semi-staged filmed performance with Camerata Bern. Recent CD releases included "Les Plaisirs illuminés" with Sol Gabetta and Camerata Bern, which was saluted with a BBC Music Magazine award, and "Le monde selon George Antheil" with Joonas Ahonen (both on Alpha Classics). A revival of the project "Maria Mater Meretrix" with Anna Prohaska presenting the image of women throughout the centuries in a musical mosaic was released in 2023, as well as a recording of sonatas by Bartók, Janáček and Brahms with Fazıl Say which marked the comeback of their duo and has been awarded Editor's Choice by Gramophone. 2024 saw the release of the album "Take 3" with clarinettist Reto Bieri and pianist Polina Leschenko – a testament to the enduring partnership of these three artists, celebrating their shared musical journey and musical origins. In October 2026, Alpha Classics released her new album with Fazıl Say, "PatKop & Say", featuring Say’s sonata "Lost Screams", written for her, alongside Szymanowski’s "Mythes", Prokofiev’s Violin Sonata No. 1 and her own work "UniSolo".