Mandozzi, Melina

She is a violinist born in Locarno, Switzerland, to a musical family where her brother is the cellist Orfeo Mandozzi.

She began playing the violin when she had her first lesson at four years old and entered the Yehudi Menuhin School in London in 1984. At the school she was taught violin by YehudiMenuhin himself as well as other acclaimed teachers and also received tutelage in chamber music. She was a first winner at the Jugend Musiziert competition held in Bremen, Germany.

Her debut was performed with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra when she was just 12 years old and after that appearance at the Royal Festival Hall she has gone on to perform at acclaimed venues throughout the world. She has also played at many music festivals and had concert tours throughout Europe.

After leaving the Yehudi Menuhin School in 1989 she went on to take further studies at the Musikhochschule Lubeck where she gained a Diploma in 1995 and a Konzertexamen in 1998. She took even further studies in Graz at the Universitat fur Musik und Dardastelle Kunst from 2001.

Continuing to appear in competitions, she was a winner and the Oistrach and Lipizercompetitions in 1993. In 1995 the Migros-Genosssenschafts-Bund awarded her a 3-year scholarship and she was a winner at the Johannes Brahms competition in Austria and the Novosibirsk International Violin Competition. In 1996 she was a winner at the Fritz KreislerViolin Competition and, in 1997 she was chosen by the Fordpreis Orpheus-Konzerte.

She is a co-founder of Ison Trio Vienna, which she formed with her brother and the pianist Luca Monti in 1993. They gained success at the Bosendorfersaal and Musikverein in Vienna and made further appearances at Festival Austria and the Pergolesi Festival. They were winners at Osaka’s International Chamber Music Competition in Japan in 1996 and have since been heard on several radio broadcasts in appeared in Japan in 2003.

In 2000 she became a member of the Vienna String Quartet which later became known as the Thomas Christian Ensemble. Later on, in 2003 she accepted the post of Concertmaster for the Vienna’s Radio Symphony Orchestra and just two years later, in 2005, she took on the same position with the Netherlands Radio Symphony Orchestra.

No stranger to television or radio she has appeared on many European broadcasts. She has also performed on CDs which include Johann Halvorsen: Orchestral Works and Prokofiev: Cello Concerto by the Bergen Symphony Orchestra, Josef Gabriel Rheinberger: Chamber Music with Organ by Hannfried Lucke, Joseph Marx: Complete String Quartets by the Thomas Christian Ensemble, Festival Leoncavallo, Hommage a Nino Rota and Ison Trio Vienna.

In more recent years she has been the guest leading violinist of several European orchestras that include the Farnborough Symphony Orchestra, the Kensington Philharmonic Orchestra, London Philharmonia, the London Symphony Orchestra and Zurich’s Tonhalle Orchester.

Sources:

Mandozzi, Melina

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