Music

Faculty

Violin

Diploma, Royal Conservatory, Toronto

Born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, Hagen began piano studies at age three and the violin at age seven. She was invited to study both instruments at the Chicago Conservatory under full scholarship when she was nine. Later studies were at the Royal Conservatory in Toronto from which she graduated in 1951, and finally at the Juilliard School of Music with Ivan Galamian.

An internationally acclaimed virtuoso who has toured extensively throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe during the past 40 years, Hagen has been guest soloist with many of the world's great orchestras: the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland Symphonmy, the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Hague Philharmonic, the Birmingham Orchestra, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, under such conductors as George Szell, Dimitri Mitropoulos, William Steinberg, Sir John Barbirolli, and Herbert von Karajan. Early in her career she won both the Leventritt and Naumburg awards in New York, the Carl Flesch Medal in London, the Pathe-Marconi Prize in Paris, a Tchaikowsky Medal in Moscow and the Harriet Cohen Medal as the outstanding woman musician of the British Commonwealth.

Already as a young woman on concert tour, Hagen was extolled for her interpretive maturity and compelling presence as well as for her astonishing technical brillance--qualities which have grown even deeper in recent years. She is also a gifted and dedicated teacher who has been known to present all 24 Paganini caprices in succession for the students in her master workshops.