Michaela Paetsch


Michaela Paetsch Neftel is an American violinist who was born in Colorado Springs. She is known for being the first female in the world to have recorded all 24 Paganini Caprices for solo violin.

Early life

Michaela Paetsch was raised in a large musical family - with parents, two sisters and four brothers - in Colorado Springs. She studied first with her parents since the age of three with Priscilla and Gunther Paetsch, then with Ivan Galamian at Meadowmount and later with Szymon Goldberg at Yale University and at the Curtis Institute of Music.

Musical career

She made her debut as a soloist at the age of eleven with the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto.
Since then, she has been performing as soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician in the major musical centres of the world, including New York's Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, the Library of Congress in Washington. She has also played in major festivals such as the Marlboro, Tokyo, Davos, Berlin, Banff, Boulder, and "Mostly Mozart" in New York.
She has been invited as soloist with the NHK Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonics of Osaka, Japan, Seoul, Liège and Bergen; the National Orchestra of Belgium, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, the Residentie Orchestra, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, and the BBC Symphony, among others. She has performed under such conductors as Kent Nagano, Dimitrij Kitajenko, Horst Stein and Myung-Whun Chung.
As a soloist of international repute she has performed in concert with, among others, the BBC Symphony Orchestra in London, the Gewandhaus in Leipzig Germany, the NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo, the Hallé Orchestra Manchester, La Suisse Romande and Montreal.

Prizes

She has won numerous awards, including first prize in the G.B. Dealey International Competition in Dallas and top prizes in the Queen Elisabeth and the Tchaikovsky International Violin Competitions.

Discography

Her extensive discography includes:
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Since 1993 Michaela Paetsch is the violinist of the quartet "ensemble incanto" with which she tours extensively and records regularly. She lives in Bern, Switzerland.