Joining music director Esa-Pekka Salonen, violinist Julia Fischer makes her long-awaited return to the San Francisco Symphony in Brahms’ Violin Concerto.

One of the world’s leading violinists, Fischer is a versatile musician also known for her extraordinary abilities as a concert pianist, a chamber musician, and a violin teacher. Born in Munich to German-Slovakian parents, she received her first violin lessons at the age of three and her first piano lessons shortly after from her mother, Viera Fischer.

At the age of nine she started studying with the renowned violin professor Ana Chumachenco, later becoming her successor at the University of Munich. The first prize at the international Yehudi Menuhin Competition in 1995 was one of the milestones in her early career and she has since performed with top orchestras worldwide.

Mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, tenor Nicholas Phan, and baritone Luca Pisaroni—all regular collaborators with the Symphony—sing in Stravinsky’s cheeky neoclassical ballet Pulcinella, which the composer called “the epiphany through which the whole of my late work became possible.”

// Feb. 23-25 at San Francisco Symphony, 201 Van Ness Ave. (Civic Center); get tickets now at sfsymphony.org.