Xavier de Maistre started studying harp at the age of nine. Like many other famous musicians’ stories, it all started with love – but in this case not as expected the love of his harp, but love for his former teacher, who offered him extra harp lessons. Xavier soon turned out to have great talent and no wonder he started to play with the Vienna Philharmonic when he was only 25. Before that he had played three years for the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and in 1998 won first prize in the “USA International Harp Competition”, the main international harp competition.
But since Xavier’s family is not a traditional harp-playing dynasty they laid great stress on a solid education. So Xavier started studying politics at the Institut des Sciences Politiques in Paris and spent a year at the London School of Economics, when he finally decided to prefer music to political studies. For a musician, he very soon achieved what all harpists dream of – a position in one of the best orchestras in the world, the Vienna Philharmonic. Awarded the Echo Klassik Award 2009 for his album Nuit d'Etoiles as “Instrumentalist of the Year” (Sony Music) he is now reaping the fruits of his labour. For more than nine years Xavier de Maistre has been a professor at the Musikhochschule Hamburg and now also teaches at the Julliard School in New York, at the Toho University in Tokyo and at Trinity College, London. After 11 years with the Vienna Philharmonic Xavier is leaving this position in order to devote himself to his international solo career – a step that no harpist has taken before.