Yulia Deyneka

Yulia Deyneka, first principal viola of the Staatskapelle Berlin since 2005, is also a versatile chamber musician and a professor of viola at the Barenboim-Said Academy in Berlin. As a soloist, she appears

regularly with various orchestras. She is a founding member of the String Quartet of the Staatskapelle Berlin and a member of the Boulez Ensemble.

Yulia Deyneka was born on the Russian island of Sakhalin in 1982 and grew up in Moscow. She studied at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, then also graduated from the Rostock Academy of Music and the Berlin University of the Arts. Even while still a member of the Staatskapelle Berlin’s orchestra academy, Daniel Barenboim became her most important musical mentor, a relationship reflected in joint chamber music performances and recordings as well as world premieres, for example that of Aribert Reimann’s Trio for countertenor, viola and piano (2018). For many years, she was a member of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra.

Yulia Deyneka has also performed with conductors such as Pierre Boulez, Zubin Mehta and Sir Simon

Rattle; she received major musical impulses from collaboration with artists such as Martha Argerich,

Yo-Yo Ma, Gidon Kremer, Maurizio Pollini, Radu Lupu, Yefim Bronfman and Jörg Widmann. Yulia Deyneka performed as a soloist under the baton of Daniel Barenboim at Carnegie Hall in New York and at the Philharmonie de Paris with the Staatskapelle Berlin. Under Andris Nelsons’ baton, she performed Schnittke’s Concerto for Viola. In 2022, she gave the world premiere of Peter Eötvös’ piece Respond for solo viola and orchestra at the Pierre Boulez Saal.

With the String Quartet of the Staatskapelle Berlin, she performed a Schubert cycle at the Pierre Boulez Saal in 2017/18, followed by a Brahms cycle in 2018/19 with the pianist Elisabeth Leonskaja at the Pierre Boulez Saal and at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, and a Janáček cycle in 2023. She appeared at the Mozartwoche in Salzburg in 2019 and 2023. Since the opening of the Pierre Boulez Saal, Yulia Deyneka has played regularly with the Boulez Ensemble, which is dedicated particularly to contemporary music.

Yulia Deyneka’s recordings can be heard regularly via radio broadcasts and streaming. Together with

François-Xavier Roth and the Boulez Ensemble, she recorded the viola arrangement of Boulez’

Messagesquisse (Peral). Three Character Pieces by David R. Coleman were released by NAXOS, and

Mozart’s two piano quartets on Deutsche Grammophon. Together with the mezzo-soprano

Magdalena Kožená and Sir Simon Rattle at the piano, she recorded the album Soirée for Pentatone in 2019. In 2022, Linn released a CD of the String Quartet of the Staatskapelle Berlin featuring quartets by Verdi, Puccini and Tchaikovsky.

Yulia Deyneka is professor of viola at the Barenboim-Said Academy in Berlin.