Mario Hossen

Mario Hossen – Photo (c) Oskar Schmidt

The Paganini-Specialist
par exellence.

Mario Hossen was born in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. His mother, Nelly Batchvarova, was an opera singer and his father was a lawyer. His ancestry is a blend of four nationalities. He has been living in Vienna since 1991, and in 1995 received Austrian citizenship in the special interest of the Republic.

Mario Hossen holds several prestigious Awards, among them the City of Sofia, Musician of the Year, Classic FM award. The oldest Bulgarian Music Festival, the “Varna Summer International Music festival”(1926), under Prof. Mario Hossen as Artistic Director, was the European Festival Association (EFA), EFFE laureate for the 2019-2020-season and the winner of the European Audience Award.

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Mario received his education in Sofia, Vienna and Paris. At the early age of 3 years, he asked for a violin, at 5 he started to play piano, at 6 he began his violin studies in Plovdiv with his first teacher Atanas Batchvarov. Among his teachers are Darina Dankova, Michael Frischenschlager and Gerard Poulet. He had his debut as a soloist with orchestra at the age of eight.  Since then, he has given concerts with the major Bulgarian Orchestras and in prestigious international halls of more than 35 countries.

He dives deep into every piece, considering the musical historical context and the greatest possible authenticity. Hossen‘s musicological and artistic endeavors are focused among other things on source research on Niccolò Paganini. He is considered as one of the leading interpreters and experts of Paganini’s Music. The complete oeuvre of Paganini for solo violin and for violin with orchestra are available as a historical-critical (urtext) editions sheet music, by Doblinger’s “Diletto Musicale” Music Series-Vienna.

Mario Hosen has released 22 CD albums for the Italian record label  Dynamic (Genova) and for Doron Music Switzerland. His discography includes integrals with the N. Paganini quartets, the violin sonatas of L. v. Beethoven, J. S. Bach and G. F. Handel, the violin concertos of N. Paganini, M. Bruch, F. Mendelssohn, J. Brahms, as well as world premiere recordings of unreleased works by N. Paganini, W. A. Mozart, G. Tartini, A. Rolla and S. Mercadante. Among the composers who dedicated works to him are Rainer Bischof, Tomás Marco, François-Pierre Descamps, Walter Baer, Alessandro  Solbiati, Milko Kolarov and Georgi Arnaoudov. 

In 2019, Maestro Mario Hossen accepted the proposal for the recording of the complete Quartets and chamber music works by Niccolo Paganini and founded the “PAGANINI ENSEMBLE VIENNA”. He is founder and artistic director of the international summer academy and music festival “Orpheus”, held annually in Vienna.
As a conducting soloist, he leads the Vienna Chamber Orchestra in the concert series “Concert Spirituel” in Vienna.

Mario Hossen plays a G.B. Guadagnini Violin (1749), which is loaned to him by the Austrian National Bank. He plays all concerts exclusively on his preferred “Thomastik-Infeld” strings. 

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