Pervinca Rista

Pervinca Rista is a musician with international experience.

Her studies took place largely in the United States, where she was admitted to the prestigious Peabody Conservatory of Music (Baltimore, MD) at age 16, earning a B.M, M.M, and G.P.D in Violin Performance with High Honors. Her teachers in the US included John Merrill, Shirley Givens, Viktor Danchenko, and Clara Berkovich, along with diverse faculty in chamber music and orchestral practice. She also holds a Master of Music from the Italian State Conservatory in Venice maxima cum laude.

From 2010 until her return to Italy in 2015, she served as Concertmaster of the Hopkins Symphony Orchestra, undertaking a vast repertoire ranging from Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade to Mahler and Sibelius symphonies, to Beethoven’s Violin Concerto Op. 61 as a soloist upon invitation by music director Jed Gaylin. She also served as Concertmaster of the chamber opera company Opera Vivente, and as a section first violin with the Baltimore Symphony (under music director Marin Alsop, previously Yuri Temirkanov) and the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra. Previously she performed frequently with the Maryland Choral Society, Peabody Chamber Players, Peabody Concert and Symphony Orchestras, including before the President of the United States at the Kennedy Center, broadcast nationally on CBS.

Following her return to Italy in 2015, Pervinca has continued to perform extensively with ensembles including I Virtuosi Italiani chamber orchestra, the Fondazione Arena di Verona (adjunct assistant concertmaster during the 2025 season), the Orchestra of the Teatro Comunale di Ferrara (OCF, principal second violin), the Mantua Chamber Orchestra (OCM), along with diverse chamber music ensembles (including Ferrara Musica for multiple seasons), also encompassing early music and baroque practice on original instruments.

She has recorded for Deutsche Grammophon, Brilliant Classics and CPO Germany, and television/radio appearances have included CBS (US), BBC (UK), and ORF Radio Austria (EU). Pervinca has collaborated with internationally acclaimed conductors and artists such as Stefan Jackiw, Hilary Hahn, Felix Hell, Enrico Elisi, Andreu Riera, Jonathan Biss, Leon Felischer, Mario Brunello, Uto Ughi, Giuliano Carmignola, Giovanni Sollima, Dmitri Sitkovetsky, Pavel Berman, and Pinchas Steinberg, among others.

In synergy with her musical life she also pursues philological research on the history of European literature, theatre, and music, of which more on the following page.