Andrea Cicalese

He was seven when his parents started him on the violin, mostly to help him settle into a new country — Naples until then, Munich ever since.

At eleven he was the youngest student ever admitted to the Accademia Perosi in Biella, where Ana Chumachenco taught him. He won his first national prize in 2019, still at school. He played the Berlin Philharmonie three days before his final exams, and made his Isarphilharmonie debut with the Bruch at eighteen, in the city where he had first picked up the instrument. Since 2020 he has studied with Josef Rissin in Karlsruhe, travelling there every week. He signed to Sony Classical in 2025 and recorded his first single with the NDR Radiophilharmonie. He plays a 1731 Guarneri del Gesù on loan from a foundation in Lugano — a present for his eighteenth birthday. At Saanen last July he was the youngest musician on the stage.