Mihaela Martin is widely regarded as one of the most distinguished violinists of recent decades. Born in Romania, she received her first violin lessons from her father at the age of five, and later studied with Ştefan Gheorghiu, a pupil of George Enescu and David Oistrakh.
Her international career began brilliantly with the First Prize at the Indianapolis International Violin Competition. At just 19 years old, Mihaela Martin earned the Second Prize at the Tchaikovsky International Competition in Moscow, followed by other major awards in Montreal, Sion, and Brussels.
Mihaela Martin regularly performs on the world’s most prestigious stages, both as a soloist with orchestras and in chamber music ensembles. In the 2023-24 season, she performed with the Bucharest Philharmonic, the Staatsorchester Hamburg, the Berlin Academy for American Music, and participated in festivals such as Verbier, Enescu, the Budapest Academy, Jerusalem, Kronberg, Santander, Ravinia, and Suntory Hall.
She has performed as a soloist with esteemed orchestras such as the BBC Symphony, the Royal Philharmonic, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, and the Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig, under the direction of conductors including Manfred Honeck, Andrew Davis, Andrew Litton, Gábor Takács, Thierry Fischer, Thomas Sanderling, Constantine Orbelian, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Charles Dutoit, Kurt Masur, Neeme Järvi, and Paavo Järvi, among others.
Chamber music holds a special place in her life. In addition to her regular appearances at numerous chamber music festivals, she is a founding member of the Michelangelo String Quartet, with which she has performed at Carnegie Hall, Boulez Saal, Wigmore Hall, the Library of Congress, the Concertgebouw, and the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées.
Since 2017 she is artistic director of the Rolandseck/Bad Honnef Chamber Music Festival and frequently collaborates with musicians Daniel Barenboim, Sergei Babayan, Lera Auerbach, Krill Gerstein, Denis Kozhukhin, Sharon Kam, Nobuko Imai and Gabor Takacs.
Mihaela Martin is a Professor of Violin at the Cologne University of Music, the Barenboim-Said Academy in Berlin, and the Kronberg Academy. She regularly gives masterclasses worldwide and serves on the juries of prestigious international competitions such as the Queen Elisabeth Competition (Belgium), the Indianapolis Competition (USA), the Concours Musical (Canada), the Enescu Competition (Romania), and the Tchaikovsky Competition (Russia).
Mihaela Martin plays a violin made by J.B. Guadagnini in 1748.
