Barnaba Poprawski is a Polish viola player, member of the Vienna Philharmonic. Born in Krakow, he studied in Stuttgart with Prof. Roland Glassl and Prof. Andra Darzins, after which he moved to Vienna to study with Prof. Hans-Peter Ochsenhofer. He holds degrees from both Stuttgart and Vienna. He started his training as an orchestral musician at an early age, first in youth orchestras in his homeland, and later as a member of both the prestigious Gustav Mahler Jugend Orchester and Bach Academie Stuttgart.
From 2008 he became a regular guest player at the Vienna State Opera and with the Vienna Philharmonic. He won a seat with the Mozarteum Orchester Salzburg in 2013, where he played until 2018. In the meantime, he was invited to lead several European Orchestras as a solo viola player, including the Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana, Tiroler Sinfonieorchester Innsbruck and the Kammerorchester Wien. With this experience, he took up the position of associate solo viola with the Sinfonia Varsovia Orchester in Warsaw in 2018; and a year later he returned to Vienna, following a successful audition to the Vienna State Opera/Vienna Philharmonic. As an orchestral player he has performed with Lorin Maazel, Pierre Boulez, Krzysztof Penderecki, Riccardo Muti, Daniel Barenboim, Simon Rattle, Christian Thielemann, Daniele Gatti, Zubin Mehta, Nicolas Harnoncourt, Andris Nelsons and Mariss Jansons.
Parallel to his career as an orchestra musician, he has been active as a member of several chamber music ensembles, including Wiener Klang Kommune, a music group specialising in performing pieces written for unusual combinations of instruments, and Ensemble XX Jahrhundert.
He has played at the world’s biggest classical music festivals, including the Salzburg Festival, the BBC Proms, and theLucerne Festival, as well as at many local initiatives such as Asahikawa Musikfestival in Japan and La folle journée de Nantes in France. His repertoire spans from the baroque to cutting-edge contemporary, to which he devoted special parts of both his training and career. Barnaba Poprawski is a devoted teacher, with special focus on audition preparation and chamber music.
