Christiana Koleski, born in 2011 in Hamburg, began playing the violin at the age of six. Since 2017 she has been a pupil at the “Ciprian Porumbescu” Music High School in Chișinău, Republic of Moldova, studying in the violin class of Galina Buinovschi with piano as a secondary subject. She lives in Ahrensburg, Germany, and travels regularly between Germany and Moldova.
Christiana won her first competition prize in 2018 with a First Prize at the Hamburg Instrumental Competition, where she went on to win seven further First Prizes with distinction up to 2024. In 2019 she received First Prizes at the international competitions “Modest Iftinchi” in Bucharest and “Paul Constantinescu” in Ploiești, as well as her first First Prize at Jugend musiziert, Germany’s national competition for young musicians, at regional level. In 2020 she won First Prizes at the regional level of Jugend musiziert for both violin and piano. In 2025 she won First Prizes at the regional and state levels and went on to receive a Second Prize at the National Competition. In 2026 she won First Prize with distinction at the Kiel Instrumental Competition, as well as First Prizes at Jugend musiziert at the regional and state levels in the string ensemble category and at state level in duo chamber music.
In August 2026 Christiana was admitted to the Lübeck University of Music as a pre-college student in the ISMA programme, where she studies in the class of Anna Melkonyan. In the same year she took part in the masterclass “epoche f”, a project for contemporary music led by Ensemble Modern, where she worked on Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s String Sextet and George Benjamin’s At First Light.
She has also taken part in masterclasses with the Verdi Quartet, Elena Ovanescu and Vlad Popescu, and in 2026 attended the Nordland Chamber Music Course. Chamber music and contemporary repertoire are of particular importance to her: her recent programmes have included Luciano Berio’s Duetti per due violini and the Sonata for Two Violins by Miklós Rózsa.
If you are interested in working with Christiana Koleski, please get in touch with the EMCY Office.
