In the 2017/18 season German-born violinist Nadja Zwiener celebrated 10 years as leader of The English Concert. Before Nadja began to specialise in historical performance practices of the 17th to 19th centuries at the Guildhall Scholl of Music and Drama in London, she spent a number of years focusing on string quartet playing as a founding member of the Kuss Quartet in Berlin, working with composers on their newly written pieces, and playing for the Munich Opera House orchestra. Having discovered a love of playing on gut strings, this soon led to performing in orchestras such as the Academy of Ancient Music, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and English Baroque Soloists.

Appointed leader of The English Concert in 2007, Nadja has frequently been invited to appear as concertmaster for the likes of William Christie and Emanuelle Haïm. She has worked with Simon Rattle, Trevor Pinnock and Christian Curnyn in the same respect and regularly appears as a guest leader for the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin.

Nadja is also active as a concerto soloist and directs programmes from the violin. Her regular chamber music partners include Maurice Steger, Kristian Bezuidenhout, and Xenia Löffler and of course her colleagues from The English Concert. She particularly enjoys working with singers and creating interesting chamber music programmes that might go as far as combining Early Music with improvised, electronic or even contemporary music and with dance or literature.

In 2016, Nadja took over as a concertmaster of the Gaechinger Cantorey in Stuttgart, for which she oversaw the transformation into a new period instrument orchestra.

As a Thuringian living in Leipzig, she feels particularly close to the music of Bach whose works also play an important role in her teaching the baroque violin and viola at the Hochschule für Musik “Franz Liszt” in Weimar.