Helena Madoka Berg

“Being accepted for the Orchestra Academy was a dream come true. At the first concert with the Berliner Philharmoniker I took part in, Gustav Mahler’s 7th Symphony under Bernard Haitink was on the programme. I was overjoyed and highly motivated to be allowed to play. I can still remember at this early stage thinking I had rarely felt so free as playing in this orchestra.”

The violin plays an important role in her family: Her parents are violinists, and when her big sister got her first violin lessons from them, Helena Madoka Berg did not want to be left out and wanted to learn the instrument too. The desire to become a professional musician came only later. The Berliner studied at the Julius Stern Institute at Berlin’s University of the Arts with Tomasz Tomaszewski (1997-2004), at the Juilliard School in New York with Robert Mann and the Academy of Music Hanns Eisler Berlin with Antje Weithaas. She also attended master classes with Kurt Saßmannshaus, Thomas Brandis, Rainer Kussmaul and Christian Tetzlaff. Her studies were supported by several grants, including from the German Foundation for Musical Life and the Villa Musica Rheinland-Pfalz.

A winner of several competitions such as the Jakob-Stainer Violin Competition and the Ibolyka-Gyarfas Violin Competition, she gained her first orchestral experience in the Jeunesse Musicales World Orchestra, the Landesjugendorchester Berlin, and the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester. From 2009 to 2010, she was a member of the Orchestra Academy of the Berliner Philharmoniker and was a student of Guy Braunstein and Christian Stadelmann. Her first orchestral position took her to the Munich Philharmonic, and since the summer of 2012 she has been a member of the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra. Helena Madoka Berg joined the second violins of the Berliner Philharmoniker in September 2013, and since February 2016 she has played in the first violin section. When she is not playing the violin, she loves cooking, baking and learning to paraglide.