Julia Smirnova wins DAAD Prize
Julia Smirnova is this year's winner of the DAAD Prize of the Hanns Eisler School of Music Berlin. She is studying for a bachelor's degree in Prof. Stephan Picard's class. The prize is awarded by the school for outstanding artistic achievements as well as special social or intercultural commitment and is endowed with 1.000 EUR. The award ceremony takes place in the winter semester.
The 23-year-old violinist Julia Smirnova has been studying in Berlin since 2017, initially with Prof. Antje Weithaas and since 2019 with Prof. Stephan Picard. As a chamber musician, she plays in the New Classic Duo with the cellist Konstantin Manaev and has also been touring Europe and the USA with the musicAeterna orchestra since 2015 at the invitation of the conductor Teodor Currentzis. Concerts have included the Auditorio Nacional Madrid, the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, the Konzerthaus Wien, the Berlin Philharmonie, the Mariinsky Theater St. Petersburg and the Ruhrtriennale in Bochum.
Julia Smirnova was born in 1997 in Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Russia, and has won several prizes at national and international competitions. Among other things, she won 1st prize at the International "Masur" Violin Competition in St. Petersburg and 1st prize at the 8th National String Competition in Tver, Russia. She began her studies at the Special Music School of the Moscow Conservatory with Prof. Galina Turchaninova and Prof. Alexandr Vinnitsky. She received further valuable impulses from international master classes, including with Thomas Zehetmair, Maxim Vengerov, Michaela Martin, Zakhar Bron, Ingolf Turban, Natalia Prischepenko, and in collaboration with Frans Helmerson and Nabuko Imai.
The DAAD Prize is awarded once a year to international students and is intended to help give faces to the large numbers of foreign students at German universities and to highlight the mutual enrichment through international exchange. It is funded by the DAAD with funds from the Federal Foreign Office.