Melina
Harrer

Melina Harrer

was born in Vienna into a family of musicians and artists. Since 2019 she holds a position as a pedagogue at Franz Schubert Conservatory. Melina Harrer started violin lessons in Vienna with Ulf Wallin. At the age of nine she was accepted to the preparatory class for talented children under the Russian professor Dora Schwarzberg (assistant teachers: Marina Sorokova and Leonid Sorokov), at the University of Music and Performing arts, Vienna (Austria). At fifteen she enrolled at the same institution as a regular student, from where she graduated as a soloist, with distinction, in 2002. She then studied for one year with Andras Kiss at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest (Hungary) and in 2007 she completed her second soloist degree back at the University of Music and Performing arts, Vienna in the class of Gerhard Schulz. Melina also completed postgraduate studies with Matheos Kariolou, at the Anton Bruckner Private University for Music, Drama and Dance in Linz (Austria). She participated in master classes of Tibor Varga, Barbara Gorzynska, Pierre Amoyal, Maxim Vengerov, Ivry Gitlis, Shmuel Ashkenasi, Charles Castleman and Erich Gruenberg. She gave her debut as a soloist at the age of twelve in a series of concerts of the Cyprus State Youth Orchestra in Cyprus and Greece. Two years later Melina performed as a soloist with the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra at the Grafenegger Schlosskonzerte. She played the concerto for two violins by J. S. Bach together with the concertmaster of the orchestra.

Melina has won prizes at the Austrian national competitions Prima la Musica in Vienna, Eisenstadt and Innsbruck. 1996 she also won a first prize at the International Competition Concorso Internazionale di Musica Città di Stresa, in Italy. In 1998 she was awarded the first prize at the competition of the Vienna Music Gymnasium. In the same year she received an Austrian State Scholarship and won a prize in the category violinpiano duet at the International Giulio Viozzi Chamber Music Competition in Triest. In 2002 she was selected by the Yehudi Menuhin Foundation to be amongst the artists supported through participation in the programme Live Music Now.

She has performed in Austria, Italy, Germany, Hungary, Liechtenstein, Great Britain, Sweden, France, Greece, Turkey, Yugoslavia, Cyprus, Turkmenistan China and Japan. She was concertmaster of the Anton Weber Orchestra Vienna, and the internationally constituted Cyprus Youth Symphony Orchestra at the opening concerts of the International Kypria festivals 2007 and 2008.

Melina started teaching while she was still studying and has been teaching ever since. In 2004 she completed a series of seminars on the Little Piano School method by Kim Monica Wright. The method involves playful techniques and is particularly successful at theaching early musical education to toddlers form the age of 18 months. Melina obtained a certificate from Kim Monica Wright, which qualified her to work at the Little Piano School in Vienna. In her scientific paper by the name of Leopold Auer und seine Violinschule with which she received the tiltle of Magistra artium, she concerns herself with origin, development and differences of the most common violin schools, with main emphasis on the Franco-Belgian School of violin technique. At the position she held form 2010 until 2018 as a pedagogue of the Musical Talent Development Program she specialized in teaching beginners from an early age. This particular program was the first musical programme founded by the Cypriot state to promote young, talented string players, supported by the mentors Martha Argerich and Ivry Gitlis. In June of 2016 one of her pupils won a first prize at the 6th International Festival of Talents/International Violin Competition Váša Přihoda in Budějovice, Czech Republic. 2017 Melina was a guest lecturer at the international orchestra camp Camp Styria in Schladming, Austria. In 2018/19 she taught at Amadeus International School Vienna. She successfully clompleted a Suzuki Teacher Training course in 2019. The following year she performed at the first concert of IUNCTUS, the orchestra, an orchestra newly founded in 2020 by the conductor and composer Nazanin Aghakhani. In September of 2022 Melina was one of the leaders of IUNCTUS, the orchestra conducted by its chief conductor Aghakhani at Mozartsaal of Konzerthaus Wien. In 2021 as well as 2022 she was a substitut musician at the Seefestspiele Mörbisch.