Ilya Gringoltz – violin (Switzerland)
Ilya Gringolts, violinist
One can hardly play the violin more expressively and uncompromisingly than Gringolts.
(Süddeutsche Zeitung)
The Russian violinist Ilya Gringolts wins over audiences with his extremely virtuosic playing and sensitive interpretations, and is always looking for new musical challenges. As a sought-after soloist, he devotes himself to the great orchestral repertoire but also to contemporary and seldom-played works. He has premiered compositions by Peter Maxwell Davies, Augusta Read Thomas, Christophe Bertrand and Michael Jarrell. In addition, he is interested in historical performance practice and collaborates with ensembles such as the Finnish Baroque Orchestra, Arcangelo or Oxford Philharmonia.
Ilya Gringolts has performed with leading orchestras around the world such as the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, BBC Symphony, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, NHK Symphony, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, and both orchestras of Southwest German Radio. Recent highlights included projects with the Bavarian Radio Symphony, Israel Philharmonic, Bamberg Symphony, Warsaw Philharmonic, Copenhagen Philharmonic, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Singapore Symphony.
The current season started successfully with highly-praised solo recitals at the Musikfest Berlin and the Salzburger Festspiele (“A performance of the century”, Der Standard). Further appearances include concerts at the Cologne Philharmonie, Stockholm Konserthuset, Festspielhaus Baden-Baden and Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires as well as collaborations with orchestras such as the BBC Scottish, Barcelona Symphony and Taipei Symphony. This autumn he will rejoin the Finnish Baroque Orchestra to present violin concertos by Locatelli, leading the rarely performed virtuoso concertos from the violin.
Ilya Gringolts is also first violinist of the Gringolts Quartet, which he founded in 2008 and which has enjoyed great success at the Salzburg Festival, Lucerne Festival, Menuhin Festival Gstaad, Edinburgh Festival and Teatro La Fenice in Venice among others. As a keen chamber musician, Ilya Gringolts collaborates with artists such as Yuri Bashmet, David Kadouch, Itamar Golan, Peter Laul, Aleksandar Madzar, Nicolas Altstaedt, Andreas Ottensamer, Antoine Tamestit and Jörg Widmann, and is a regular guest at the festivals in Lucerne, Kuhmo, Verbier, Colmar and Bucharest (Enescu Festival), as well as the Serate Musicali in Milan and St. Petersburg Philharmonia.
Following numerous critically praised recordings on the Deutsche Grammophon, BIS and Hyperion labels, Ilya Gringolts devoted himself to the chamber music of Robert Schumann from 2010 to 2011, releasing three CDs on Onyx. In 2013/14 his recording of Paganini’s 24 Caprices for solo violin received many outstanding reviews, and in the orchestral realm, he has released recordings of Mieczysław Weinberg’s Violin Concerto with the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra in 2015 as well as Dvorak’s violin concerto with the Prague Philharmonia for Deutsche Grammophon, and concertos by Korngold and Adams with the Copenhagen Philharmonic (Orchid Classics) in 2017. Following his recently released CD of Stravinsky’s Duos on BIS records is an eagerly awaited upcoming recording of the composer’s orchestral works.
After studying violin and composition in St. Petersburg with Tatiana Liberova and Jeanna Metallidi, he attended the Juilliard School of Music where he studied with Itzhak Perlman. In 1998 he won the International Violin Competition Premio Paganini, as the youngest first prize winner in the history of the competition.
As well as his position as violin professor at the Zurich Academy of the Arts, he is also a Violin International Fellow at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow. Ilya Gringolts plays a Giuseppe Guarneri “del Gesù” violin, Cremona 1742-43, on loan from a private collection.