ARTIST PROFILE: Nurit Stark

Winner of the 2023 Gramophone Award for Best Instrumental Recording, Israeli violinist and violist Nurit Stark enjoys an international career as a soloist, chamber musician, and advocate of contemporary music. The recording features solo works by Béla Bartók, Peter Eötvös, György Ligeti, and Sándor Veress.

She received her musical training in Tel Aviv, Berlin, and Cologne with Haim Taub, Ilan Gronich, and the Alban Berg Quartet. As a soloist, Stark has performed with leading orchestras including the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra, the Munich Radio Orchestra, the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra, the Symphony Orchestra of India, the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra, and Filarmonica Transilvania. She has also appeared as guest concertmaster with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra.

A dedicated chamber musician, Stark has appeared at festivals including Lockenhaus, Schleswig-Holstein, Wien Modern, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Milano Musica, and West Cork.

She has performed at major venues including Carnegie Hall, the Philharmonie Berlin, the Konzerthaus Vienna, and the Tonhalle Zürich. She has also appeared in experimental
music-theatre productions at the Burgtheater Vienna, Volksbühne Berlin, MC93 Bobigny, and Gessnerallee Zürich, integrating the violin into interdisciplinary stage works.

Committed to contemporary music, Stark has premiered numerous works and collaborated closely with composers including Sofia Gubaidulina, György Kurtág, Peter Eötvös, Peter Ablinger, Carola Bauckholt, Manos Tsangaris, Georg Nussbaumer, Salvatore Sciarrino, Beat Furrer, Isabel Mundry, Jennifer Walshe, Daniel Rothman, and Valentin Silvestrov.

Stark has recorded extensively for BIS, Claves, and Genuin Records. Her recording of Kurtág’s Kafka Fragments with soprano Caroline Melzer received the German Record Critics’ Award in 2015. From 2019–2024, Stark was Professor of Violin at the Stuttgart State University of Music and Performing Arts and from 2022–2026 held a professorship at the Haute École de Musique de Genève. She plays a 1710 Pietro Guarneri di Mantova violin.