Leila Schayegh bio
Leila Schayegh, who was born and grew up in Switzerland, began learning modern violin before moving to period instruments. She is now regarded as one of the leading exponents of the violin on the early music scene. Onstage, she is a captivating performer with great expressiveness and energy, drawing audiences into her playing. Her repertoire now ranges from the beginning of the violin literature around 1600, when the instrument was held lower down against the chest, to the high Romantic period. In addition to the core repertoire of J. S. Bach, Vivaldi, Mozart, Brahms, and their contemporaries, Schayegh champions works that have been unjustly overshadowed by more well-known names. In 2017, she released a highly regarded album of sonatas by Carlo Farina, and in 2020, she finished an enthusiastically received recording of Jean-Marie Leclair’s complete concertos with La Cetra Barockorchester Basel. She is in great demand at major international festivals and a regular guest leader of both early music ensembles and modern orchestras. Invitations include concerts in the US, South America, Australia, Europe, and Asia. She enjoys a close musical collaboration with the harpsichordist, organist, and conductor Jörg Halubek, performing as a duo and releasing several prizewinning recordings that focus on the repertoire for violin with obbligato keyboard instrument. For the Classical period and later, her accompanist is the Austrian pianist Christoph Berner on the fortepiano. Other important collaborators in concerts and recordings are Stephan MacLeod and Gli Angéli Genève, as well as Václav Luks and Collegium 1704. In 2019, Schayegh founded her own ensemble, La Centifolia, enabling her to expand her programs to include orchestral works.
Schayegh’s recordings have regularly won awards, including several Diapason d’or de l’année prizes, the Diapason d’Or, Editor’s Choice from Gramophone magazine, and the German record critics’ best-of list. In 2024, she was awarded the Swiss Music Prize. Since 2010, Schayegh has been a professor at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, passing on her knowledge to up-and-coming generations of players. As successor to Chiara Banchini, Schayegh teaches a class for violin in old notation, conveying great expressiveness based on an extensive knowledge of historical sources.
