Veronika Hagen is a member of the Hagen Quartet, which developed out of a sensational children’s quartet that she formed with her three siblings. (Since 1987 Rainer Schmidt has been the second violin.) With the Quartet – both a constant and an innovative part of string quartet culture –Veronika Hagen has performed on the world’s greatest stages for more than forty years.
Her teachers and her most important chamber music partners in ensembles up to octets include Hatto Beyerle, Gidon Kremer, the late Heinrich Schiff, the late Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Ivry Gitlis, Mitsuko Uchida, Krystian Zimerman, Sabine Meyer, Sol Gabetta and Jörg Widmann. With all of them she shares a deep and sincere devotion to music.
Her numerous CDs, released from 1985 by Deutsche Grammophon and from 2011 by Myrios Classics, include solo recordings such as Brahms’s viola sonatas with Paul Gulda and Mozart’s Sinfonia concertante with Augustin Dumay and Camerata Salzburg. Various albums on which she appears have been awarded prizes, including the ECHO Klassik (twice) and the Diapason d’Or (also twice).
Since 1988 Veronika Hagen has taught at the Mozarteum University Salzburg, where she has been a professor of viola and chamber music since 2003. She also passes on her wealth of experience to younger generations in masterclasses, including in Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, Lisbon, Lucerne, Bern, Verbier, and at the International Summer Academy in Salzburg.
