On December 23 and 26, violinist Sophie Branson (19) gave two sold-out concerts as part of The Grand Christmas Concert series at the Tonhalle Zurich, performing with the Zurich Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Heiko Mathias Förster. The programme featured Felix Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor.
Sophie Branson’s performance was a true triumph. After the final chords, the audience rose to its feet, rewarding the soloist with long and enthusiastic standing ovations. This performance can rightfully be considered one of the finest of her concert career to date. Sophie played with complete emotional commitment: her sound combined transparency and airiness with richness, silvery brilliance, tenderness, and a sense of flight—qualities essential to Mendelssohn’s Romantic idiom. Impeccable technical precision and finely polished passagework further underscored the artistic maturity of her interpretation.
Preparation for the concert took approximately three months. Sophie began working on the concerto in October together with her violin teacher, Liana Tretiakova, founder of the Zakhar Bron School of Music in Zurich. Already in early December, she performed the concerto in its entirety in Sofia, Bulgaria, and just three weeks later appeared on the stage of the Tonhalle Zurich. The rehearsal schedule with the orchestra was extremely tight, consisting of only two rehearsals: a full rehearsal two days before the concert and an acoustic rehearsal immediately prior to the performance.
Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto rightfully belongs to the golden canon of the world violin repertoire and represents an essential milestone in the professional development of every violin soloist. It demands absolute technical mastery and an exceptionally wide tonal palette in order to convey the subtlest emotional states and inner fluctuations characteristic of the era of High Romanticism.
For many decades, the concerto was performed in editions by outstanding violinists of the 20th century—such as David Oistrakh, Yehudi Menuhin, and others—who proposed alternative bowings to facilitate performance. In recent years, there has been a return to the urtext—Mendelssohn’s original score with authentic articulation and bowings. Performing the concerto in its original version is considerably more challenging, as violin technique, instruments, and strings in the mid-19th century (then exclusively gut strings) differed significantly from those used today.
The concerto was composed by Felix Mendelssohn between 1838 and 1844 for his close friend, the eminent violinist Ferdinand David. The premiere took place on March 13, 1845, at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, where Mendelssohn was serving as music director at the time and was personally present at the first performance.
For Sophie Branson, these concerts marked her fourth and fifth appearances in the legendary Tonhalle Zurich—and her third performance there in 2025. She gave her first two concerts on this stage in December 2022, at the age of 16, performing with the same orchestra and conductor, also to a completely sold-out hall. On that occasion, she performed Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3 in G Major.
Sophie’s third concert at the Tonhalle took place in early March of this year, when she was already 18, and featured an exceptionally ambitious programme. She performed Johannes Brahms’ Violin Concerto in D Major with the Bodensee Philharmonic Orchestra (Konstanz) under the direction of its artistic director, Maestro Gabriel Venzago. This concerto is considered one of the summits of the violin repertoire and is usually performed by mature, experienced artists. For an 18-year-old musician, it represented a serious challenge—one that Sophie met with great success, demonstrating remarkable musical maturity.
“Sophie began studying with me in 2010, when she was not yet four years old. Over the course of sixteen years of working together, she has progressed to the level of a young soloist performing concerts throughout Europe. I am sincerely happy that her musical talent has been able to unfold fully and has been so warmly appreciated by audiences.
In my view, three sold-out concerts at the Tonhalle in one year testify to the recognition of her violin artistry and mark the beginning of a serious solo career. I wholeheartedly wish Sophie major performances on the world’s leading stages and collaborations with the finest orchestras.”
Photo credit: Schlomo Aschkenasy (1), Benjamin Branson (2) and Pavel Shudnev (3)
Tags: Liana Tretiakova, Sophie Branson, Tonhalle Zurich
Categories: Concerts with Orchestra
