Pauline Sachse

Viola

Making music for me is always a dialogue with the composer, an engagement with an era, and the art of entering into a higher level of connection with the work, fellow players, and the audience. Pauline Sachse

In her exploration of stylistic diversity, Pauline Sachse chooses performance practice means such as gut strings, various tunings, and corresponding bows that enable a lively articulation and sound language corresponding to the spirit of the epoch. She works with composers such as Jörg Widmann, Peteris Vasks, Christian Jost, and Kit Armstrong and has participated in various premieres. She explores her very personal sound language in her own compositions.

Pauline Sachse’s broad repertoire is also reflected in her discography. In addition to works by Schumann, Brahms, Shostakovich, and Hindemith, she has also made various first recordings, such as the “Hamlet Echoes” by Christian Jost or various early classical sonatas by Franz Benda and Giorgio Antoniotto. Both the CD “Viola Galante” and her recording of the Shostakovich Sonata and Schubert’s “Swan Song” with pianist Lauma Skride appeared on the longlist for the “German Record Critics’ Award” and were highly praised by the press.

In October 2023, the Hamburg-born artist took over the professorship for viola at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater “Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy” in Leipzig. She has already held the same position from 2013 to 2019 at the Hochschule für Musik “Carl Maria von Weber” in Dresden and from 2019-2023 at the Musikhochschule Lübeck, as well as a guest professorship at the Hanns Eisler School of Music Berlin.

Her students and alumni hold solo and tutti positions as well as academy positions in renowned orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Berlin and various opera houses in Berlin, Cologne, Hanover and Hamburg, as well as a professorship in Stuttgart.

Before her career as professor, Pauline Sachse was the solo violist of the Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Berlin for several years and worked as a guest in orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic, the Bavarian Radio, and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra.

She received her education at the Hanns Eisler School of Music and the Hochschule für Musik Frankfurt a.M. with Tabea Zimmermann, whose assistant she became in 2007. She continued her studies at the UdK Berlin (with Wilfried Strehle), the Yale University USA (with Jesse Levine), as well as with the Alban Berg Quartet at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Cologne.

Both in her pedagogical work and as an artist, Pauline Sachse pursues an integral approach that includes elements from acting, dance, brain research, and psychology. She developed her own method in the form of stage and personality training for students and was herself heard in innovative formats such as the dance project of choreographer Sasha Waltz as part of the pre-opening of the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg.

Pauline Sachse plays a viola by Paolo Maggini (Brescia) from 1610 and a new build by Patrick Robin (2017 Angers).