Julia Fischer Quartet

Julia Fischer - violin
Alexander Sitkovetsky - violin
Nils Mönkemeyer - viola
Benjamin Nyffenegger - cello
 
The current season marks fourteen years of Julia Fischer appearing with her own string quartet. The Julia Fischer Quartet unites Ms Fischer with three renowned musicians, each a soloist in their own right: violinist Alexander Sitkovetsky, violist Nils Mönkemeyer and cellist Benjamin Nyffenegger. These four artists have enjoyed performing chamber music jointly and in different configurations for years. The idea to establish a string quartet was born in 2010 when the four musicians played through varied repertoire during Julia Fischer’s festival at Lake Starnberg. The four musicians felt an immediate connection, each of them contributing to the quartet’s sound in equal measure and responding to each other’s every musical impulse.  This season the Julia Fischer Quartet enjoys an extensive tour, performing in venues across Greece, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Germany and Estonia.
One of the world’s leading violinists, Julia Fischer is a versatile musician also known for her extraordinary abilities as a concert pianist, a chamber musician and a violin teacher. At the age of 9 she started studying with the renowned violin professor Ana Chumachenco, later becoming her successor at the University of Munich. She performs with some of the world’s most prestigious orchestras, and regularly directs the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. Ms Fischer has released numerous critically acclaimed and awarded recordings, first under the Pentatone label and later under Decca. In 2017 she launched her own music platform, the JF CLUB, which offers exclusive audio and video footage, previews of her new recordings as well as personal insight into her music and her work. Ms Fischer holds numerous awards including the Federal Cross of Merit, Gramophone Award and the German Culture Prize.
Alexander Sitkovetsky was born in Moscow into a prominent family of musicians and performed his first concert when he was just eight years old. He became a student at the Menuhin School the same year and considers Lord Menuhin his inspiration, mentor and musical partner. Sitkovetsky gave concerts with him during his school years as both duo partners and as soloist/conductor. It was participating at the Yehudi Menuhin Competition that Alexander Sitkovetsky and Julia Fischer first met at a tender age. Today he performs as soloist with major orchestras worldwide and is a frequent guest of many festivals and chamber venues.  He has recorded CDs under the Angel/EMI, Decca, Bis and Orfeo labels, including the 2008 recording of Bach’s Double concerto with Julia Fischer.  Alexander also founded the eponymously named Sitkovetsky Trio with Wu Qian and Isang Enders.
“He is moved by a passion of music-making one finds only very rarely.” (Julia Fischer)
Time and again, Nils Mönkemeyer demonstrates the wealth of characters and colours that can be conjured by the viola. He has dramatically raised the profile of his instrument, not least by drawing attention to the broad spectrum of the viola repertoire, from the transparent, rhetorical style of the Baroque to the music of the present day. His programmes comprise original literature, rediscovered pearls, his own arrangements, and first performances. He is much in demand as soloist by significant orchestras world-wide. Mönkemeyer is not only a passionate performer, but also an equally passionate teacher, holding a professorship at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin. In 2025 he was awarded the prize of “University Teacher of the Year” by the German Universities Authority, the first time that this accolade has been granted to a musician. Both he and Julia are former students at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Munich and have understood each other superbly from the very beginning of their first joint chamber music projects. “It was spiritual kinship, personally as well as musically.”  (Julia Fischer)
Benjamin Nyffenegger has been assistant principal cellist of the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich since 2008.  As a chamber musician and soloist he pursues an intensive international concert career, performing in Europe and Asia’s major music centres. Numerous public radio stations throughout Europe document his work. His CD recordings of the complete piano trios by Schubert, Beethoven and Brahms (RCA Red Seal, Sony Classical) with the Oliver Schnyder Trio received highest praise in the international music press, as did the album "Winterreisen" with the tenor Daniel Behle, which added two "shadow protagonists" - violin and cello - to the Schubert cycle. Nyffenegger received his first cello lessons from Magdalena Sterki-Hauri before he became a junior student of Walter Grimmer at the Zurich University of the Arts. He completed his studies with a Master of Performing Arts at the same institution as a student of Thomas Grossenbacher. Nyffenegger is artistic director of the SeetalClassics concert series in Seon/Switzerland.
“His spontaneity on stage was scary in the most positive sense.” (Julia Fischer)
(November 2025)