Aida-Carmen Soanea

Aida-Carmen Soanea, an eclectic and charismatic violist, won first prize at the 2005 Bucchi Viola Competition in Rome. The accolades she earned in Moscow in 2000, when Aida won second prize at the Bashmet Viola Competition and was also awarded by the “Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben” Foundation in Hamburg, Germany had already established her as one of the most formidable talents of her generation.
As a soloist, Aida-Carmen has appeared in music festivals,such as Internationale Osterfestspiele Luzern, Rheingau Musikfestival, Musikfestspiele Sanssouci, Musikfestival Mecklenburg Vorpommern and she has performed with different ensemble formations, including Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, English Youth Orchestra, European Chamber Orchestra and Berliner Symphoniker. She shared the stage,playing concerts together with Tabea Zimmermann at the Cité de la Musique Paris, Renaud Capuçon at the Lucerne Spring Festival,Tanja Becker- Bender making her debut in the big hall of the Berlin Philharmony and with Tasmin Little performing Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante throughout England.
An avid chamber musician, Aida-Carmen regularly performs with pianists José Gallardo and Andrej Jussow and she performed with Natalia Gutman and Kolja Blacher, as well as Reiner Kussmaul, with whom she appeared several times at the “Berliner Festwochen“.Aida-Carmen also has been a guest of many European festivals, where she collaborated with wonderful musicians as the Vertavo Quartet, Alexander Melnikov, Jean Quilhem Queyras, Adrian Brendel and many others.
From 2007 to 2015 Aida-Carmen Soanea was a founding member of the delian:quartet. In that chamber music formation,she appeared at Schleswig- Holstein Musikfestival, the Ludwigsburger Festspiele and Schwetzinger Festspiele..etc.The quartet performed in Vienna Musikverein, the Festspielhaus Baden Baden, the Philharmonie Essen, Hessischer Rundfunk Frankfurt and many major concert venues throughout Europe and enjoyed a great success.

Born into a family of Romanian singer, Aida Carmen Soanea studied from 1995 to 1999 at the Freiburg University School of Music and at the Berliner Hochschule “Hanns Eisler“ in the class of Kim Kashkashian. She found new inspiration in Paris pursuing her soloists studies at the CNSM de Paris with Gerard Causse. She was influenced and received big musical input from artists like Juri Bashmet, but especially Claudio Abbado, whom she encountered regularly as a member of Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra,later on also as a member of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra and as substitute with the Berliner Philharmoniker.

After many years of research work appears the present solo CD by Aida Carmen Soanea with works of Norbert von Hannenheim (1898-1945), a pupil of Arnold Schönberg, who died after the end of the war in a mental institution. These pieces that were considered lost, make a great enrichment to the viola repertoire of the Second Viennese School.

Aida Carmen Soanea’s feeling and connection to Contemporary Music is very strong ,so her regular participation in the Ensemble Modern in Frankfurt is part of it. She works together with different living composers and several works were dedicated to her.