Janine Jansen

A truly exciting and versatile artist

Top Classical, December 2020
Born January 7, 1978 in the Netherlands, Janine Jansen is one of the world’s great violin players. She began to study the violin at age 6 under the influence of her family: her father is an organist and harpsichord player (as is one of her brothers), her mother is a singer, and another brother plays the cello in a Dutch radio orchestra. Her uncle is the renowned bass Peter Kooy.

Ever since her Concertgebouw debut in 1997, Janine Jansen has been a huge star in her native Holland. Today she is internationally recognized as one of the great violinists. Her London debut in November 2002, accompanied by the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Vladimir Ashkenazy, was quickly followed by invitations from some of the world’s most prestigious orchestras, including the Berliner Philharmoniker and the New York Philharmonic, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and the great orchestras of London, Paris and Munich. She has worked with such eminent conductors as Lorin Maazel, Valery Gergiev or Paavo Järvi among many others. 

 In 1993 she founded the International Chamber Music Festival in Utrecht, which continues to take place every year. 

Janine Jansen has an exclusive recording contract with Decca (Universal Music).  In 2009 Jansen released her recording of the L.v. Beethoven and Benjamin Britten Violin Concertos with Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, the London Symphony Orchestra. Both orchestras were conducted by Paavo Järvi. Jansen said that recording these concertos together was a long-standing desire of hers, as she sees these two works as among the greatest concertos in the current repertoire. Nowadays, she sees a recording session as being “like the biggest lesson I have every year, just by listening back to yourself in such a critical, detailed way.” “You learn a lot from it.” 

Jansen is the recipient of numerous prizes, including four Edison and three ECHO Klassik awards. She was awarded the 2003 Nederlandse Muziekprijs (Dutch Music Prize) and the Concertgebouw Prize in January 2013. She is also the recipient of the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Instrumentalist Award. 

Since 2000, Janine Jansen has played the 1727 Barrère Stradivari. “I know it so well, I love it. It has so many possibilities. It’s not a typical dark instrument or a typical strong instrument, but I feel that I can do what I need to get there. It’s very colourful.”said the artist during an interview for Strings Magazine. 

Janine next tour date is at Het Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, after that she will be at Philharmonie de Paris in Paris.