Victoria Martino was a full merit scholarship student, pursuing a doctorate in violin performance at the prestigious University of Southern California Thornton School of Music with Eudice Shapiro, when she received an invitation from legendary Viennese violinist Eduard Melkus to join both his chamber group, Ensemble Eduard Melkus, and Capella Academica Wien, the groundbreaking early music ensemble. A ten- year professional sojourn in Vienna established her as one of the leading proponents of the “Wiener Klangstil,” a centuries-old, uniquely Viennese approach to sound production and stylistic performance practice of the great Austrian and European classical repertoire. During this period, Ms. Martino regularly performed chamber music with the soloists of the Vienna Philharmonic and faculty of the prestigious Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst, thus becoming firmly ensconced in the city’s most illustrious musical and cultural traditions. While living in Vienna, Ms. Martino also founded her own ensemble, The Albertina Soloists, with which she toured internationally, concertizing throughout Europe, North America, Australia, and Japan.
Considered a specialist both in early music (“period performance”) and contemporary performance practice, Victoria Martino has an enormous repertoire, spanning six centuries. She is passionately committed to the revival of works by major composers that are rarely performed, and has become known internationally for her monographic anniversary concerts and “marathons” of the complete works for violin (unaccompanied and accompanied) by Bach, Beethoven, Bernstein, Brahms, Corelli, Dvorak, Gade, Grieg, Handel, Hindemith, Ives, Lutoslawski, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Nielsen, Pärt, Schubert, Schumann, Sibelius, Strauss, Tartini, Tchaikovsky, and Telemann. Martino’s “Mozart Marathon,” a nine-hour performance of all 32 violin sonatas, has been presented regularly, to public and critical acclaim, since the composer’s 250th birthday in 2006.
A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard University and the University of California, Ms. Martino is a specialist in interdisciplinary studies, with academic degrees in art history, literature, and music. In addition to performing solo and chamber music recitals all over the world, Ms. Martino has initiated and presented lecture-concerts exploring the interrelationship between art and music at many international institutions, including the Guggenheim Museums of New York, Bilbao and Berlin, the National Art Gallery of Victoria (Australia), the National Art Gallery of Ontario (Canada), the National Art Gallery of Slovenia, the Museum of Western Art in Tokyo, the Albertina in Vienna, the J. Paul Getty Museum, and MOCA Los Angeles, to name only a few. Since 2002, Ms. Martino has regularly presented solo recitals, lecture-concert series, and lecture series at the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library in La Jolla, California.
An internationally recognized art historian and writer, Ms. Martino has curated numerous museum exhibitions in Europe and the United States, and has published over 60 catalogue essays and scholarly articles in more than six languages on artists and composers, including Wassily Kandinsky, Arnold Schoenberg, Jackson Pollock, Richard Pousette-Dart, Sean Scully, Mimmo Paladino, John Baldessari, Josef Capek, Zoran Music, and many others. She has also participated in international symposia and lectured widely. Ms. Martino has been a guest professor at universities in Australia and the United States, teaching music, art history, and innovative humanities courses. As a professional art, music, dance, and theater critic, Ms. Martino has published exhibition and performance reviews in THE Magazine, New York Arts, The Berkshire Review for the Arts, The Huffington Post, and many European journals.
Victoria Martino plays an original, unmodified Baroque violin by Michael Andreas Bartl (Vienna, 1760), and a modernized violin by Jakob Stainer (Absam, 1670).