Vilde Frang – Biography

The sensational debut CD of EMI Classics’s Young Artist of the Year 2010 Vilde Frang Bjærke has reaped unanimous acclaim in domestic as well as international music press. Her interpretations of Sibelius’ and Prokofiev’s violin concertos are already ranked as classics, and she is projected a promising career as one of contemporary violin’s major performers. […]

The sensational debut CD of EMI Classics’s Young Artist of the Year 2010 Vilde Frang Bjærke has reaped unanimous acclaim in domestic as well as international music press. Her interpretations of Sibelius’ and Prokofiev’s violin concertos are already ranked as classics, and she is projected a promising career as one of contemporary violin’s major performers. At home her CD was bestowed with the Spellemannspris, the Norwegian equivalent of the Grammy Award.
At home, Frang Bjærke has been heavily influenced by renowned teachers and performers Alf Richard Kraggerud, Henning Kraggerud and Stephan Barratt-Due of the Barratt Due Institute of Music. Since 2002, Frang Bjærke has studied in Germany, primarily with Kolja Blach in Hamburg and Berlin and Ana Chumachenco in Munich.
In her teens, Frang Bjærke built a solid foundation for an international career as soloist with a large number of orchestras in Scandinavia, in German-speaking Europe, the Baltic States and eventually also in UK, USA and Asia. Key milestones in this process were the debut with the Oslo Philharmonic under Mariss Jansons in 2000 and an applauded appearance with the London Philharmonic in 2007, a performance that promptly led to a re-engagement under Vladimir Jurowski in the Royal Festival Hall in 2009.
This string of applauded appearances attracted the attention of the top tier of today’s leading musical personalities such as Anne-Sophie Mutter, Gidon Kremer, Mitsuko Uchida, Yuri Bashmet, Martha Argerich and Maxim Vengerov, who remain Frang Bjærke’s role models and mentors and with whom she works with at prestigious festivals, on tours of several continents and in a wide range of other contexts.
The near future brings debuts with leading orchestras in Sweden, Japan, Switzerland, Finland, South Korea, Denmark and Austria, as well as tours with German, Danish, English and Czech orchestras and invitations to leading festivals at home and abroad. In Norway, Frang Bjærke is scheduled to perform at the 2010 Bergen International Festival, the Olavsfestdagene festival in Trondheim and also with the Oslo Philharmonic in December.
Frang Bjærke performs on Fritz Kreisler’s Carlo Bergonzi violin from 1735, which is owned by Dextra Musica.
www.vildefrang.com