Biography

Born in Germany in 2001, Elena Küssner received her first violin lessons at the age of three from Abraham Jaffé and later as a junior student with Prof. Bernhard Hartog at the Berlin University of the Arts. She also studied with Rollo Kovac in Paris. After studying biomedicine in Sweden and working in cancer research, she switched to the viola in 2022. In autumn 2024, she began her music studies at the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music with Diyang Mei. 

She regularly took part in master classes and festivals with Zakhar Bron, Janine Jansen and Rainer Schmidt. She is a scholarship holder at the Music Academy in Liechtenstein and takes part in the intensive weeks and activities that take place there. 

Elena has already successfully participated in several national and international competitions, including “Jugend musiziert”, “Clés d’Or”, “Stockholm International Music Competition”, and “Violin of the North”. 

At the age of ten, she made her solo debut under the direction of Yuri Bashmet in Vienna and in the following years performed as a soloist in the Berlin Philharmonic. Since 2023, she has been playing regularly as a viola player as a substitute with the Berlin Philharmonic and the Karajan Academy and has been invited to the Carl Flesch Academy, the Gstaad Festival, the NUME Academy and the Villars Music Academy, among others. In the summer of 2024, she performed as a soloist with the Jena Philharmonic and the Baden Baden Philharmonic and received an award from the Mayor of Baden Baden.