In March 2021 Hoffmann signed an exclusive agreement with Deutsche Grammophon. The deal paves the way to innovative future projects, starting with her debut DG album, Nightscapes, released in February 2022. Exploring the magical world of night music as well as the theme of dance – appropriately enough for an instrument which requires rapid footwork as well as manual dexterity – the album featured music by composers such as Britten, Chopin, Pizzetti and Respighi. Praised by the critics (“Hoffmann’s legerdemain still dazzles ... I find her balance of songful lyricism and inexorable forward motion especially impressive” – Gramophone), Nightscapes won Hoffmann a 2022 Opus Klassik Young Talent of the Year award.
Her second album, Fantasia, focuses on the Baroque period, presenting a selection of inventive, improvisatory works originally written for keyboard or lute by Johann Sebastian Bach, his sons Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel, and his contemporaries Handel and Weiss. As Hoffmann notes, her instrument has a “natural potential for the kind of free, ornamental arpeggiation so typical of Baroque preludes and fantasias”. Fantasia will be released on 6 September 2024.
In the course of her already extensive orchestral career, Magdalena Hoffmann has been able to work with the world’s greatest conductors, including Sir Simon Rattle, Kirill Petrenko, Daniel Harding, Zubin Mehta, Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Mariss Jansons, among many others.
Her approach to programme building often involves interdisciplinary projects that breach traditional genre boundaries or feature inventive combinations of pieces. In 2014 Hoffmann first performed her theatre concert for children, Odyssey on 47 strings, at the HarpMasters Festival in Switzerland. She has also premiered several works for her instrument written by contemporary composers, collaborating with other artists being one of her greatest sources of inspiration.
Recent highlights of her schedule include a concert of works by Jörg Widmann in Munich in the context of the BRSO’s musica viva series; a recital with flautist Zofia Neugebauer in Lucerne; and Wagner-Brahms programmes in Munich, Ingolstadt (Audi Sommerkonzert) and Bad Kissingen (Kissinger Sommer) as part of the BRSO’s Summer Festival Tour with Sir Simon Rattle.
She will perform works by Mahler, Berg and Widmann at the Salzburg Festival as a member of Camerata Salzburg, conducted by Widmann, and with soloist Matthias Goerne (21 August), while her plans for the 2024-25 season include one recital with Karl-Heinz Schütz in the Tyrolean village of Ischgl (25 September) and another with fellow flautist Henrik Wiese in Seoul (19 November).
Magdalena Hoffmann was born in 1990 in Basel, Switzerland, and started playing the harp there at the age of six. She began studying with Fabiana Trani in Düsseldorf in 2007 and remained with her until she graduated from the Robert Schumann Musikhochschule six years later, having spent one year at the Royal Academy of Music in London, where she had lessons with Skaila Kanga and was introduced to jazz harp by Park Stickney.
She continued her training with a master’s degree at Munich’s Hochschule für Musik und Theater, where she studied with Cristina Bianchi. Masterclasses and private lessons with such harp luminaries as Fabrice Pierre, Isabelle Moretti, Alice Giles, Isabelle Perrin, Mara Galassi and Milda Agazarian helped Hoffmann refine her considerable skills and widen her creative outlook.
In 2014 Magdalena Hoffmann took up a position as principal harp of the Tiroler Symphonieorchester Innsbruck and, the following year, started teaching concert harp at the Tiroler Landeskonservatorium.
She made her international breakthrough in 2016 as winner of two special prizes at the prestigious ARD Music Competition in Munich and in November 2018 was appointed principal harp of the BRSO.
Hoffmann is a cultural ambassador for CASA HOGAR, a charitable initiative offering education and a home for young girls in Colombia’s troubled Chocó region. “I hope to be able to open the ears and hearts of many people to the suffering that still exists in the Chocó – and to fight it,” says the harpist.
