Pauline Sachse

Biography:        

“For me, making music is a dialog with the composer, a confrontation with an epoch, and the art of connecting at a higher level with the composition, musical partners on stage and the audience.”


As one of the most versatile artists of the younger generation, Pauline Sachse performs with musicians such as Isabelle Faust, Janine Jansen, Harriet Krijgh and Martin Helmchen. The sought-after soloist and chamber musician is a regular guest at festivals such as the “Salzburger Festspiele”, the “Schubertiade” Schwarzenberg, the Moritzburg Festival, and the “Rheingau Musik Festival”. She performs in music centers such as the Wigmore Hall London, the Wiener Konzerthaus and the Berliner Philharmonie. In her exploration of stylistic diversity, she chooses performance-practical means such as gut strings, matching bows and various tuning and temperaments which help convey affects and enable a lively articulation and musical language corresponding to the zeitgeist of the epoch. She works with composers such as Jörg Widmann, Peteris Vasks, Christian Jost and Kit Armstrong and has participated in various world premieres.

Pauline Sachse’s discography reveals a wide-ranging repertoire. In addition to works by Schumann, Brahms, Shostakovich and Hindemith, she has realized various first recordings and world premieres, such as Christian Jost’s “Hamlet Echoes” or several early classical sonatas by Franz Benda and Giorgio Antoniotto. Both the CD “Viola Galante” and her recording of the Shostakovich Sonata and Schubert’s Schwanengesang with pianist Lauma Skride appeared on the longlist for the “Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik” and earned high critical acclaim.

In October 2019, the Hamburg native accepted the professorship for viola at the Musikhochschule Lübeck.  

From 2013 to 2019 she held the professorship for viola at the Academy of Music Carl Maria von Weber in Dresden and was previously the principal violist of the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin and guest professor at the Hanns Eisler School of Music Berlin.

At this university she studied with Tabea Zimmermann and worked as her assistant. She took further studies at the UdK Berlin, at Yale University USA as well as with the Alban Berg Quartet.

Pauline Sachse plays a viola by Paolo Maggini (Brescia) from 1610 and a viola by Patrick Robin.