Ariadne Daskalakis

Essential

Violinist Ariadne Daskalakis is critically acclaimed for her expressive sound and her stylistic versatility. At home on the international stage, she has performed in venues ranging from Boston's Jordan Hall and Gardner Museum and New York's Carnegie Recital Hall to the Gulbenkian Center in Lisbon, the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées Paris, the Rudolfinum Prague, the Cologne Philharmonic Hall, the Dortmund Konzerthaus, the Munich Herkules Hall and the Berlin Philharmonie and the Athens Megaron. She has appeared as soloist with the Munich BR Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Academy of Ancient Music Berlin, the Kammerakademie Potsdam, the English Chamber Orchestra, the Athens National State Orchestra, the Tirana Radio Orchestra, Concerto Köln and the Norwegian Baroque Orchestra. Recently she has appeared with the Kölner Akademie and the Cologne Sinfonietta. In the dual role of leader and soloist Ariadne Daskalakis has collaborated with the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, the Prague Chamber Orchestra and the Cologne Chamber Orchestra. She collaborated closely with Ensemble Oriol Berlin and more recently with the New Rhne Chamber Orchestra.

A specialist in performance practice ranging from baroque to modern, she was hailed by German MDR Radio as a “universal specialist” for her recording of Vivaldi Concerti with the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra on the label Tacet. Benjamin Dunham of Early Music America wrote of her Biber Sonatas: "With this release, Daskalakis propels herself into the front rank of historical violinists."

Ariadne Daskalakis won prizes at the International ARD-Munich Competition and the St. Louis Symphony Strings Competition, as well as from the Mozart Society Dortmund, the Harvard Music Association and Framingham State University, which awarded her the first Christa McAuliffe Medal. An avid chamber musician, she led the Manon Quartet Berlin for 10 years. She performs regularly as recitalist or, on baroque violin, with her Ensemble Vintage Köln, with which she recorded the complete Handel Sonatas for Naxos, the complete Rosary Sonatas by Biber for the label BIS and Bach's "Musical Offering" for Tacet/Eigenart. She has also released on BIS the complete violin works by Franz Schubert, together with Paolo Giacometti on fortepiano and with the Kölner Akademie under Michael Alexander Willens. This set, on BIS, unique partly thanks to the choice of original instruments, has received glowing reviews from the Strad magazine, Klassik heute (10/10 and CD of the week) and Diapason (5/5).

Numerous further recordings document the broad spectrum of her repertoire and the rich depth of her musical experiences. These include the Complete Violin Sonatas by Handel, Fauré and Raff, Violin Concerti by Tartini and 20th century works by Lutoslawski, Janacek and Szymanowski (on the labels Naxos, Carpe Diem and Tudor). Her Handel and Tartini recordings were both Selections of the Month in the The Strad magazine. Further recordings with period instruments present sonatas by Ferdinand Ries and violin concerti by Jan Kalliwoda on the label cpo.

Ariadne Daskalakis also collaborates with composers, exploring new music and genres, like Caspar Johannes Walter’s Violin Concerto Zeichnungen and Christoph Coburger’s “Opera Mono” Herr K und Frau N, a staged solo work with video installation. She has recently premiered works by Thierry Tidrow and Sebastian Gottschick. With the Academy of Ancient Music Berlin she performed as soloist in the Vivaldi Four Seasons in “4x4”, in which dancer Juan Kruz Diaz de Garaio Esnaola choreographed the soloist and the whole ensemble.

She has explored further interdisciplinary collaboration with dancer Antonio Ruz, stage designer Sabine Mader, actor Christian Kleinert and, on numerous occasions, musician and dancer/choreographer Yves Ytier. The author Ruth Padel wrote poems for Ariadne Daskalakis and Ensemble Vintage Köln to accompany performances of the complete Biber Rosary Sonatas. These were commissioned by Francis Humphreys of the International Chamber Music Festival in Cork, Ireland, and premiered in 2023.

Together with the esteemed music publishing house Wiener Urtext Edition Ariadne is currently working on a new Urtext Edition of the Violin Sonatas by Ludwig van Beethoven. Band I was released in 2023; Band II is still in progress.

A former student of the New England Conservatory Preparatory School, Ariadne Daskalakis enjoyed an education in music and humanities at the Juilliard School, Harvard University and the Hochschule der Künste Berlin. She is Professor at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz (Conservatory for Music and Dance) Cologne and is currently Vice-President there. She has also taught as guest at projects at the Juilliard School, the Eastman School of Music and various other international institutions and festivals. She has served on the juries of the ARD International Music Competition, the Isang Yun Competition and the Cologne International Music Competition (as Jury Chair).

Former students have positions in fine orchestras including the WDR Symphony and WDR Rundfunk Orchestras Cologne, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Luxembourg, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn, the Aachen Opera and the Karlsruhe State Theatre, among others. Prizes have been awarded to her students at international competitions in Germany, Italy, Spain and Japan.

In 2012 Ariadne Daskalakis founded “Music from Land’s End,” an international summer chamber music festival in Wareham, Massachusetts. Since 2015 she has been Artistic Director for numerous projects at the European Academy for Music and Art Palazzo Ricci Montepulciano.


Ariadne Daskalakis is based in Cologne. She has enjoyed the stewardship of violins by A. Stradivari, G.B. Guadagnini, Peter Wamsley and Marc De Sterke. Since 2022 she plays a violin by Julia Pasch.
2024