Maja Horvat, violin
Maja Horvat communicates the spiritual power of music through her performances, offering joy and comfort which enable her audience members to develop their own unique and meaningful connection with the Arts. She explores the full range of magic and versatility of which the violin is capable through her work as a soloist, chamber musician and in collaboration with ensembles, orchestras and composers all over the world. While constantly exploring masterpieces of all eras, Maja’s true passion is giving contemporary works a good start in life and finding fresh resonance in lesser-known gems of 20th-century repertoire.
Maja gave her debut performance at Wigmore Hall in 2021 as first violinist of the Brompton Quartet, of which she is a founding member and with whom she gives frequent world premieres. They won the St. Martin-in-the-Fields Chamber Music Competition and have collaborated with record producer Andrew Keener and many currently active composer. She has performed with some of the world’s most prominent chamber musicians including Sir Andras Schiff, Tabea Zimmerman, Christian Tetzlaff, Vladimir Mendelssohn and David Cohen.
In 2019 Maja was awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Emily Anderson Prize for an outstanding violinist. She is a Tillett Debut Scheme Artist. She has performed as a soloist with orchestras including the Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra and Chamber Orchestra, the National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra Mladi Solisti and the Mendelssohn Chamber Orchestra. She has appeared at festivals including the Tartini Festival, Stift International Music Festival, ChamberJam Düsseldorf and Festival Ljubljana. Among other accolades, Maja has won the Temsig Slovenian National Competition and the International Tartini Competition; she was awarded the Special Szymanowski Prize at the inaugural Karol Szymanowski International Music Competition. Maja is also an active orchestral member. She has performed as concertmaster of the Royal College of Music’s Philharmonic and Symphony Orchestra, Fidelio Symphony Orchestra and the Echo Ensemble. She has played with Symphonisches Orchester der Jeunesse Leibnitz, Ljubljana International Orchestra the Symphony Orchestra at the Conservatory of Music and Ballet in Ljubljana.
It was around the age of three that Maja felt sure that she wanted to dedicate her life to playing the violin. She finally began learning aged seven. Her first teacher was Bojan Ristić at the Music School Jesenice in Slovenia, where she later studied with Blanka Piotrovska. While still in Jesenice, Maja performed as a soloist in venues across Slovenia as well as in Austria, Germany, Croatia, Italy and the Czech Republic. In 2015 she graduated the Conservatory for Music and Ballet Ljubljana, where she learned with Volodja Balžalorsky. As a Victor and Lillian Hochhauser Scholar at the RCM in London, Maja studied with Daniel Rowland and Leonid Kerbel while participating in masterclasses with internationally-acclaimed performers such as Maxim Vengerov, Nicola Benedetti, Ivry Gitlis, Saewon Suh, Anton Martynov, Vasilij Meljnikov, Igor Ozim and Wonji Kim Ozim. In June 2022 she finished her Artist Diploma studies at the RCM under the tutelage of Alina Ibragimova.