Conservatory Violinist Receives Prestigious Instrument By Joanna Chang
	RELATED STORY: Daniel Austrich: At Home in Oberlin		Violin performance major Daniel Austrich ’05 will spend the next year performing on a 1663 Andrea Guarneri violin. His use of the rare instrument from Cremona, Italy, is his prize for winning the Deutsche Musik Instrumenten Fonds Competition, held March 3, in Hamburg, Germany. Of the 64 musicians participating in the competition, only four were awarded instruments. Thomas Brandis, concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic for the last 20 years, presided over this year’s jury. Austrich, born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and a resident of Hamburg, Germany, since 1997, now studies at Oberlin with Alla Aranovskaya, first violinist of the St. Petersburg Quartet, Oberlin’s quartet in residence. On the day Austrich won the competition, he performed in concert with other winners at the Hamburg Museum of Art. Deutschland Radio and two major German television stations, ZDS and NDR, recorded the concert. A musician qualifies to enter the competition only after winning first prize at any international competition (in Daniel's case, first prize at the Jeunesses Musicales competition in Germany in August 2001). Those honored with the use of instruments from the foundation can keep them longer by winning the competition again in subsequent years. Julia Fischer and Viviane Hagner are among the violinists playing instruments from the foundation. On April 14 and 15, Austrich will perform solo recitals with pianist Alexander Mekinulov in New York and Washington, D.C., respectively. In July 2002, he will perform in the Davos Music Festival Young Artist Series in Switzerland, and in 2003, he will perform Lalo's Symphonie Espagnole with California’s Auburn Symphony and in the St. Petersburg Quartet Festival in Zwolle, Holland.
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