While she has often been associated with the standards of the violin repertory, particularly those from the German School, Christiane Edinger has played a variety of works throughout her career, including concertos by Tchaikovsky, Saint-Saëns, Elgar, Prokofiev, Bartók, and Khachaturian, as well as several by contemporary composers like Penderecki, Bernd Alois Zimmermann, Boris Blacher, Howard Blake, and Cristobal Halffter, who wrote two concertos specifically for her. Though she has lacked the superstar status of modern string players like Anne-Sophie Mutter, Edinger was and still is recognized as one of the finest German violinists of her generation. She has performed with the leading orchestras in Europe and the Americas and has collaborated with such conductors as Herbert von Karajan, Neville Marriner, Kurt Masur, Christoph Eschenbach, and many others. She has also regularly performed chamber music, notably in her ensemble, the Edinger Quartet. Her recordings are still widely available on a range of labels, including ASV, Arte Nova, Audite, Naxos, Orfeo, and others. Christiane Edinger was born in Potsdam, Germany, on March 20, 1945. Her father was the virtuoso pianist Gerhard Puchelt. Edinger began studying the violin at five and her advanced studies were at the Berlin Hochschule fur Musik and Juilliard School of Music. Her list of teachers is impressive: Vittorio Brero (Berlin), Nathan Milstein (Switzerland), and Joseph Fuchs (Juilliard). At 19 Edinger appeared at the Berlin Festival playing works by Boris Blacher, risky repertory at the time. Her performances were so impressive, though, that she was immediately invited to appear with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, with whom she played the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto. Edinger was soon an imposing presence on the international scene, regularly performing at the major concert venues across the globe. She has appeared with the Berlin Philharmonic more than a dozen times, in concerto repertory by Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Blacher, Zimmermann, and many others. From the 1990s Edinger began making more frequent chamber music appearances. The Edinger Quartet has garnered much critical acclaim, notably from recordings on the Audite label of music by Eduard Franck, which feature the Opp. 54 & 55 quartets (2001) and the Op. 49 quartet and string quintet (2002). Edinger has also collaborated in concert and on recordings with American pianist James Tocco. Its recording of four violin sonatas by Eduard Franck was issued on Audite in 2008. Edinger plays a 1623 Amati.