Isabel Charisius – Viola
Isabel Charisius has been a member of the Alban Berg Quartet since 2005. She studied violin initially in Karlsruhe (Germany) and later in Tel Aviv and then came to Vienna on a German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) grant, where she discovered her love for the viola and studied with Professor Thomas Kakuska.
She has been engaged as solo violist by the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, the Radio Symphony Orchestra of Vienna and the Munich Philharmonic.
Since 1994 Isabel Charisius has dedicated herself mainly to chamber music. She played with Lisa Leonskaja, Tabea Zimmermann, Heinrich Schiff, Maurizio Pollini, Sir Simon Rattle, Alois Posch, Radovan Vlatkovic, Milan Turkovic and Wolfgang Meyer.
As a soloist, she performed inter alia with the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra and at the Lucerne Festival under James Levine.
Like her quartet colleagues, Isabel Charisius is professor of chamber music at the Cologne Conservatory. She is also a professor of viola at the Lucerne Conservatory. Additionally, she regularly holds masterclasses for viola and chamber music at the Britten Pears School in Aldeburgh (UK), at the Berlin University of the Arts, at the Summer Academies in Frenswegen (Germany) and at the Dutch String Quartet Academy in Amsterdam.