Sophie Branson was born in Tokyo in 2006 into the family of a British mathematician and a violinist from Russia. From the age of four she has been studying in the violin class of Liana Tretiakova at the Zakhar Bron School of Music in Zurich, Switzerland.
At seventeen Sophie is a prize-winner of the Astana Violin Competition in the memory of David Oistrakh and a winner of numerous national and international competitions in Switzerland, Italy, France and Latvia as a soloist, chamber musician and a baroque violinist. In 2022 Sophie debuted at the Tonhalle Zurich, having performed Mozart’s Violin Concerto K.216 with the Zurich Symphony Orchestra.
She regularly takes masterclasses with Prof. Zakhar Bron in Interlaken, Salzburg and Zurich and also attends masterclasses of such prominent violinists as Maxim Vengerov, Daniel Hope, Sergei Ostrovsky and Esther Hoppe. In 2023 Sophie received a Full scholarship to take a course at the Liechtenstein Music Academy with Prof. Latica Honda Rosenberg.
At the age of eight Sophie became a prize winner of the international competition “Crescendo” in Geneva, where in the final round she made her debut as a soloist with the chamber orchestra “Soloists of Neuchâtel” under the baton of Sergei Ostrovsky, and performed the Bach Concerto in A-minor. In the same year she appeared as a soloist with the Pskov Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Arif Dadashev (Moscow) with concertos of Bach and Vivaldi. Since then Sophie has appeared regularly as a soloist with symphony and chamber orchestras in Zurich, Geneva, Basel, Paris and London, where she has performed concertos by Bach, Mozart, Wieniawski and Sibelius and virtuosic pieces by Wieniawski, Sarasate and Stravinsky.
In 2018, Sophie participated together with Vadim Repin, Alexander Buzlov and Ilva Eigus in the world premiere of Daniel Schnyder’s Concerto Grosso “iGeneration” at the Trans-Siberian Art Festival. With the Novosibirsk Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra, she also performed Stravinsky’s Italian Suite. Both performances received excellent reviews in “The Strad”.
At the Menton Music Festival 2018 Sophie performed at the Cocteau Museum as part of the “Young Artists” series. Since 2021, Sophie has been playing the violin made by Stefan Peter Greiner.