Around the Music Festival

The audition for the position of concertmaster of the Vienna State Opera Orchestra has been successful for the young Israeli Yamen Saadi. He is the fourth concertmaster after Rainer Honeck, Volkhard Steude, and Albena Danailova, and the ballet “Sleeping Beauty” in December will be his first job.

The State Opera Orchestra is the parent organization of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, which assumes its name when performing outside the opera house. For their the fourth concertmaster, Brazilian-German José Maria Blumenschein arrived in 2016 to replace Rainer Küchl, who However, he left after one season, and the position has been vacant ever since.

Saadi was born in Nazareth, Israel, in 1997 and is 25 years old. Nazareth is known as the city where Jesus Christ grew up, but Saadi was raised in a Muslim family. After receiving violin lessons at the Barenboim Said Conservatory of Music in Nazareth, he studied with Chaim Taub, concertmaster of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. He continued his studies at the Kronberg Academy under Mihaela Martin.

At the age of 11, he gave his first solo concert with the Haifa Symphony Orchestra and joined the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra led by Daniel Barenboim He became concertmaster in 2014, when he was 17, and has participated in numerous performances.

He also won the Aviv and Paul Ben-Haim competitions. Since last July, he has been on loan for three years a 1734 Stradivarius “Lord Amherst of Hackney,” which Fritz Kreisler used from 1936-45.

This past January he released the album “Voices from Paris” accompanied by Natalia Mirshteyn, and in May he substituted for Leonidas Kavakos as concerto soloist in a concert by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.

Photo：Israel Philharmonic