Born in Hungary, Franciska Anna Hajdu discovered her love of the violin as a young child. From the age of 14, she regularly attended masterclasses in Hungary and all of Europe, taking lessons with Zsolt Kalló, Katalin Kokas, and Lucia Krommer. She went on to study modern violin with Dr. Svikruha Márta at the Varga Tibor Institute for Musical Art and completed her degree there in 2012. In addition, she received a Hungarian state scholarship that allowed her to spend a semester at the Carl Maria von Weber University of Music in Dresden. There, under the guidance of Prof. John Holloway, she took her first steps into the world of the baroque violin and historical performance practice. She subsequently attended the International Summer Academy of the Mozarteum Salzburg (Prof. Thomas Albert and Prof. Hiro Kurasaki), Miszla Barokk (Mónika Tóth), and the Schwetzinger Hofmusik Academy (Midori Seiler and Jaap ter Linden). In October 2012, the young violinist began her studies with Veronika Skuplik at the University of the Arts in Bremen and graduated with a Master’s degree in baroque violin performance in 2019.
She has performed as a guest artist with early music specialists such as L’Arpeggiata (Christina Pluhar), la dolcezza (Veronika Skuplik), Ensemble Weser-Renaissance (Manfred Cordes), Concerto Palatino (Bruce Dickey), Concerto Foscari (Alon Sariel), and the Bremer Barockorchester (Néstor Cortés). Franciska Hajdu has been a member of the ensemble Los Temperamentos since 2013. With this group, she has toured through Latin America multiple times, performing in Mexico, Chile, Peru, and Bolivia.
The violin that she plays is generously provided by the Tesdorpf’sche Charitable Foundation.
In the spring of 2015, she founded the ensemble PRISMA with her colleagues Elisabeth Champollion (recorder), Alon Sariel (lute), and Dávid Budai (viola da gamba). The quartet met with immediate success, winning first prize at the International H. I. F. Biber Competition in Austria and receiving the opportunity to spend three years in the “EEEmerging” program for young early music ensembles hosted by the Académie d’Ambronay in France. PRISMA has performed at many renowned music festivals, including the Mozart Festival in Würzburg, the York Early Music Festival, and the Wunderkammer Festival in Trieste, as well as for German (WDR), Austrian (ORF), and British (BBC) radio.
Franciska Hajdu is concertmaster of Ensemble Volcania (Elisabeth Champollion), a position she has held since the group’s inception in 2018.
As an ensemble musician, she has performed in numerous international festivals, including the Utrecht Early Music Festival (NL), Tage Alter Musik Regensburg (DE), AMUZ Festival van Vlaanderen-Antwerpen (BE), Monteverdi Festival Cremona (IT), Südtirol Festival Merano (IT), Missiones de Chiquitos Festival de Musica Barroca (Bolívia), and the Valletta Baroque Festival (Malta).