Violinist and Conductor
Rainer Honeck joined the first violins of the orchestra of the Wiener Staatsoper and the Wiener Philharmoniker in 1981, advancing to the position of concert master at the Staatsoper in 1984 and at the Philharmoniker in 1992. Rainer Honeck performs as a soloist in Austria, Europe, Japan and the USA with the Wiener Philharmoniker (Dvořák’s Violin Concerto under Mariss Jansons, Mozart’s Sinfonia concertante under Riccardo Muti, music by Alban Berg under Daniele Gatti and, most recently, Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto under Andrés Orozco-Estrada. He also regularly works with the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo, including a series of concerts featuring all of Mozart’s compositions for violin and orchestra. Honeck has also played Berg’s Violin Concerto with the Mariinsky Orchestra under Valery Gergiev. He has always been active as a chamber musician as a founding member and leader of the Wiener Virtuosen (1989–1999), leader of the Wiener Streichersolisten (1982–2004) and first violinist of the Ensemble Wien (2000–2011) and of the Chamber Orchestra Vienna-Berlin (2009–). Having made a successful career as an orchestral musician, soloist and ensemble player, Honeck also began to appear as a conductor and has already led the Nagoya Philharmonic Orchestra, the Malmö Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Nice (France) and the Mariinsky Orchestra. Rainer Honeck plays the Stradivarius ex-Hämmerle violin (1709), on generous loan from the Österreichische Nationalbank.
