Sophia Jaffé has been known for many years to the classical music world as a brilliant violinist and a sincere, skillful musician, delighting audiences and press at home and abroad with her musicality.

Born into a musical family, Sophia gave her first public performance aged seven in the Berlin Philharmonie’s chamber music hall. She began her musical education with her parents, moving on to Herman Krebbers in Amsterdam and Stephan Picard at the Hanns Eisler School of Music in Berlin.

Now she complements her concert career with her own teaching activities, having held a professorship at Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts since 2011, where she is leading a successful violin class. She is giving each summer masterclasses in Austria at Allegro Vivo’s Festival, as well as in Manchester‘s Royal College of Music and others. In April 2022 she will return to Musicalta in Paris area, France. The path of such exceptionally talented young musicians is often distinguished with prizes, and that of Sophia Jaffé is no exception. She has numerous prizes in international competitions to her name, such as the Leopold Mozart Competition in Augsburg in 2003, the Concours de Genève in 2004, first prize in the Deutscher Musikwettbewerb, and third prize in the Concours Reine Elisabeth in Brussels in 2005.

Since then she has performed as a soloist with such renowned orchestras as the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester, the Konzerthausorchester in Berlin, the chamber orchestras of Stuttgart, Munich and Heilbronn, the Mozarteum Orchestra in Salzburg, the Bruckner Orchester Linz, the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester, Sinfonieorchester Basel, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Czech Philharmonic and Radio Symphony Orchestra in Prague, and the National Symphony Orchestra in Brussels, to name but a few. This has led to work with conductors like Marek Janowski, Walter Weller, Zdenek Macal, Sir Mark Elder, Dennis Russell Davies, Gabriel Feltz, Michael Sanderling, Lothar Zagrosek and Gilbert Varga, in such halls as the Berlin Philharmonie, Frankfurt’s Alte Oper, the Herkulessaal & Prinzregententheater in Munich, the Cologne Philharmonie, the Stuttgart Liederhalle, London’s Cadogan Hall, Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall, the Vienna Konzerthaus, and the Grosse Festspielhaus in Salzburg, amongst others. Sophia Jaffé is a guest at numerous international festivals, from Ludwigsburg, Rheingau, Merano, Concentus Moravie in the Czech Republic, the Passauer Musikwochen, and the Leipzig Bachfest, to Moritzburg, Delft, Reims and many more.

Numerous live recordings and radio productions document her playing. Her début CD with longstanding chamber music partner Björn Lehmann — works by Suk, Bach, Ysaye and Beethoven — was released in 2009 on the Genuin label to great critical acclaim. In spring 2014 a recording of John Casken’s contemporary violin concerto, with Manchester’s Hallé Orchestra under the direction of Markus Stenz, formed part of a CD portrait of the composer. Sophia Jaffé’s wide-ranging repertoire with orchestra so far comprises 70 works spanning the seventeenth century to the modern day. She gave the world premiere of the violin concerto “Words of the Cross” (2010) by Slavomir Horinka, and performed the late Romantic violin concerto (1909) by Erich Jacques Wolff — rediscovering a composer ostracised during the Third Reich — with the Neue Philharmonie Westfalen under Heiko Mathias Förster. As a rarity alongside standard concert literature, she plays concertos by Mozart’s contemporaries Myslivecek and Rosetti. In the last seasons Sophia has returned to the argovia philharmonic, to the Dresden and Stuttgarter Philharmonic Orchestras, to the Brno Philharmonic and she performed the concert of Peteris Vasks “Distant Light” with the Georgian Chamber Orchestra Ingolstadt.

In the season 2021/22 Sophia Jaffé plays her debuts with the Museum-Orchestra Frankfurt under the direction of Thomas Guggeis, the Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland Pfalz with Markus Huber, as well as a series of concerts with Hallé Symphony Orchestra Manchester and Sir Mark Elder among others. She will play Recitals and chamber-music concerts with pianist Björn Lehmann (Berlin and Frankfurt) and Severin von Eckardstein in the Netherlands. A new CD with Brahms Sonatas and Romances by Clara Schumann will be released in 2022.