Nora Chastain

Sir Yehudi Menuhin referred to Nora Chastain as “one of the most elegant and refined violinists I know.” Internationally recognized for her brilliant career as a soloist, chamber musician, and pedagogue, Chastain is one of the most prominent figures in the current violin scene.
Granddaughter of the American composer Roy Harris, she was born in Berkeley, California, and began her violin studies with Anne Crowden. She later continued her training at the Cincinnati Conservatory and the Juilliard School, where she was a student of Dorothy Delay. Later, at the International Menuhin Music Academy in Gstaad, she studied with Alberto Lysy, Ana Chumachenco, and Sir Yehudi Menuhin himself, in addition to working closely with Sándor Végh.At the age of sixteen, she debuted in Berlin performing Barber’s Violin Concerto, beginning a distinguished international career. Since then, she has performed as a soloist with orchestras such as the San Francisco Symphony, the Orchestre de Paris, the Cincinnati Philharmonia, the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, the Basel Chamber Orchestra, the Württembergisches Kammerorchester Heilbronn, the Orquestra Nacional do Porto, the MDR-Sinfonieorchester Leipzig, the Frankfurt Opera Orchestra, the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra, the Bern Symphony Orchestra, and the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional del Perú, among many others.She has collaborated with conductors such as Sir Yehudi Menuhin, Sebastian Weigle, José Serebrier, Michael Sanderling, David Stern, and Marc Tardue. Several composers have written works dedicated to her, including Daniel Schnyder, Gerhard Samuel, Susanna Erding, and Georg Wörzer.
Passionate about chamber music, Nora Chastain is a founding member of the Menuhin Festival Piano Quartet and the Trio Kreisleriana, with which she has toured extensively in prestigious concert halls in Frankfurt, Hamburg, Berlin, Bonn, Paris, Milan, Zurich, Geneva, Edinburgh, Washington D.C., New York, Boston, San Francisco, and Sydney.
She has participated in festivals such as the Schleswig-Holstein Festival, Ludwigsburger Schlossfestspiele, Schwetzinger Festspiele, and the Menuhin Festival Gstaad, and has collaborated with artists such as Sharon Kam, David Geringas, Pascal Devoyon, Joshua Bell, as well as with the Fauré Piano Quartet, the Carmina Quartet, and the Merel Quartet.

Her discography for the Chandos, Ars, Claves, Koch-Schwann, and Naxos labels includes Mozart’s sonatas, the complete Beethoven cycle, sonatas by Fauré, Debussy, and Honegger, as well as numerous works for trio and piano quartet. Her orchestral recordings include concertos by Beethoven and Bartók, as well as Casella’s Triple Concerto. Her recording of the Indian Concerto by Peruvian composer Teodoro Valcárcel was nominated for the Grammy Awards.Her numerous awards include the Menuhin Prize (Paris, 1985) and the Förderpreis der Europäischen Wirtschaft (Zurich), awarded for her outstanding work as a soloist.Considered one of the most recognized pedagogues in Europe, Nora Chastain has trained winners of international competitions, concertmasters of major European orchestras, members of prominent chamber ensembles, and professors at conservatories and universities. She regularly gives master classes and participates as a jury member in international competitions.One of the main focuses of her teaching is the integration of American and European traditions of violin performance.Currently, Nora Chastain is a professor of violin at the Universität der Künste Berlin (UdK). Between 1991 and 2020, she was a professor at the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste, and from 1993 to 2004 she held the violin chair at the Musikhochschule Lübeck.