Yulia Deyneka

1982: Yulia Deyneka is born in Russia. Aged 12, she wins a place at the Central Music School as a violinist in her home town of Moscow. Her teacher: Maria Sitkovskaya, former student of viola legend Vadim Borisovsky. Soon after, she holds a viola in her hands for the first time. Immediately she is fascinated by the proximity of the sound to the human voice, and the versatile role of the viola in chamber music.

At the Tchaikovsky Conservatory she studies with Alexander Bobrovsky. During a masterclass in Germany she makes the acquaintance of violist Felix Schwartz. He offers to teach her at Rostock University of Music and Drama. Yulia agrees on the spot, graduating successfully from both institutions. In 2003 she passes the audition for the Berlin Staatskapelle orchestra academy and falls in love with Germany’s biggest city. Not long after her 22nd birthday, she is already playing principal viola in the Staatskapelle orchestra in Berlin, by the side of her former mentor Felix Schwartz.

But Yulia wants more. She wants to keep learning. So she goes on to study with Wielfried Strehle at the UdK Berlin, where she gains her “Konzertexamen” in 2014. For some time she has been teaching viola herself, first at Rostock University of Music and Drama, then at the music academy of the Barenboim-Said Foundation in Seville. She plays in Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra and mentors the viola section for 10 years. Her collaboration with pianist and conductor Barenboim intensifies, who now describes her as “one of his favourite chamber music partners”. In 2016 Yulia is awarded a teaching post at the Barenboim-Said Academy in Berlin, graduating to a professorship in the winter semester of 2019. She continues to mentor the orchestra academy of the Berlin Staatskapelle.  

Yulia Deyneka’s musical path has led to musical collaborations with numerous renowned artists including Martha Argerich, Yo-Yo Ma, Maurizio Pollini and Radu Lupu. She has received musical inspiration under the baton of game-changing conductors such as Pierre Boulez, Zubin Metha, Simon Rattle, Andris Nelsons and Francois-Xavier Roth.

As a soloist, she has played Strauss’s “Don Quixote” with Misha Maiskyunder the direction of Massimo Zanetti. Under Andris Nelsons she has performed Alfred Schnittke’s viola concerto, and in 2015 she took the solo part in Mozart’s “Sinfonia Concertante” alongside Wolfram Brandl in both the Carnegie Hall and the Paris Philharmonie. On the podium: Daniel Barenboim.

Yulia’s recordings to date include both piano quartets by W.A.Mozart (Deutsche Grammophon) and Drei Charakterstücke by David R. Coleman, written especially for Yulia (NAXOS). In collaboration with soprano Magdalena Kožená and Sir Simon Rattle at the piano, the album “Soirée” (PENTATONE) was released in 2019.

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Concerts with Yulia Deyneka