Sol Gabetta

Sol Gabetta studied at City of Basel Music Academy and Hanns Eisler Music School Berlin. Training under Leo Viola is recorded. The recorded working language is Spanish. The field of work recorded is opera. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are classical music. Distinctions recorded are Echo Klassik – Instrumentalist of the Year, Victoires de la musique classique and Herbert von Karajan Prize.

Gabetta began to learn violin at the age of three, and cello at age four. She continued to study both instruments until age eight, and then switched her focus exclusively to the cello. She won her first competition at the age of 10, soon followed by the Natalia Gutman Award. Her teachers include Christine Walevska, Leo Viola, Ivan Monighetti at Reina Sofía School of Music, Piero Farulli and Ljerko Spiller. Gabetta won the Crédit Suisse Young Artist Award in 2004. In 2006, she founded her own festival, the Festival Solsberg. Her debut with the Berlin Philharmonic and Sir Simon Rattle was at the Baden-Baden Easter Festival in 2014. Her debut with the Staatskapelle Berlin occurred in December 2014. She was Artist in Residence at the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival in summer 2014, and also held artistic residencies at the Philharmonie and Konzerthaus Berlin. She was awarded the Herbert von Karajan Prize at the Salzburg Easter Festival in 2018. Other prizes have included the Gramophone Award for Young Artist of the Year in 2010 and the Würth Prize of Jeunesses Musicales Germany in 2012. At the Echo Klassik Awards, she received the award in 2007, 2009 and 2013, being named Instrumentalist of the Year in 2013. She received the Diapason d'Or for her recordings of Haydn, Mozart and Elgar cello concerti, as well as works by Tchaikovsky and Ginastera. Gabetta has made commercial recordings for Sony and Deutsche Grammophon. Contemporary composers who have written music for Gabetta include Michel van der Aa, who composed Up-close for Gabetta and the Amsterdam Sinfonietta, and Pēteris Vasks, who wrote his cello concerto 'Presence' for Gabetta. In November 2015, Gabetta's album of the music of Vasks, Presence, was released, which includes the cello concerto 'Presence', and "Musique du Soir" for organ and cello, in which Sol Gabetta and her mother, a professional organist, perform together. Gabetta featured as soloist in the opening concert of the BBC Promenade concerts 2016 season, playing Elgar’s Cello Concerto. In August 2024, Gabetta performed the UK premiere of Francisco Coll’s Cello Concerto with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Tianyi Lu, at the BBC Proms. Supported by a private stipend from the Rahn Kulturfonds, Gabetta performs on a cello by G. B. Guadagnini dating from 1759. She resides in Switzerland and has been teaching cello at the Basel Music Academy since 2005. She is also a regular presenter for the programme KlickKlack, for Bavarian Radio (BR-Klassik).

She is the youngest of four children of Andrés Gabetta and Irène Timacheff, parents of French and Russian descent. Her older brother Andrés is a professional violinist. She speaks six languages, Spanish, French, Russian, Italian, German and English. Gabetta is married to Balthazar Soulier, with whom she has a son.