David Garrett
September 4, 1980
© Uli Weber
Acerca de
At the age of 13, David Garrett was the youngest exclusive artist with Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft, and had an international career at the young age of 13 to 17. He was born in Aachen, the son of German-American parents, and first started to learn the violin at the age of four. At the age of 10, he had his first public concert with the Hamburg Philharmonic under the direction of Gerd Albrecht.
In 1992 Garrett started to work with the great Polish violinist Ida Haendel, who significantly influenced his artistic development. At the age of 18, David Garrett moved to New York, where he became one of the first students of Itzhak Perlman at the Juilliard School. Since his childhood, David Garrett has played in all great European cities and Japan with the most distinguished orchestras and conductors, including the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the Russian National Orchestra, the Orchestre National de Paris, the Mozarteum Orchester, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, the Staatskapelle Dresden and many others.
Partners at the music stand include Claudio Abbado, Zubin Mehta, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Herbert Blomstedt, Charles Dutoit, Eliahu Inbal and Mikhail Pletnev, to name a few ones. He has played chamber music with such pianists as Itamar Golan, Daniel Gortler and Milana Cernyavska. Among his recordings are: Mozart’s Violin Concerts with Claudio Abbado (1995); the 24 Paganini Caprices (1997), the Violin Concertos of Tchaikovsky and Conus with the Russian National Orchestra under Mikhail Pletnev (2001), Pure Classics as compilation of his first recordings (2002).
The album Classical Romance, which appeared in November 2009 went straight into the top ten. Here David Garrett together with the Berliner Sinfonieorchester under the baton of Andrew Litton among others recorded the Violin Concerto of Mendelssohn and own arranged compositions. In January 2010 a successful tour with the Staatskapelle Weimar under George Pehlivanian took place with this program. In 2011, a new album was release, on which David Garrett arranged classical rock songs by Aerosmith, Nirvana or Wings on the violin.
In addition, David Garrett has held the Guinness world record since May 2008 as the fastest violinist of the world. He played the Hummelflug by Rimskij-Korsakow in 66 seconds, which means incredible 13 notes per second. Since autumn 2008 David Garrett is ambassador to UNESCO.
David Garrett plays a Stradivari Ex A. Busch from 1716.