Boris Belkin

BORIS BELKIN began learning to play the violin at the age of six and made his first public appearance with the great conductor Kyrill Kondrashin when he was seven. He studied at the Central Music School of the Moscow Conservatory with professors Yankeievitz, Glezarova and Andrievsky. While still a student he played all over the Soviet Union as a soloist with leading national orchestras and in 1973 Boris won first prize at the Soviet National competition for Violinists. Boris Belkin played in Moscow at the inaugural 1^st Rostropovich Festival in 2011 with Temirkanov and the St Petersburg Philharmonic orchestra. Since emigrating to the West in 1974, he has regularly worked with conductors like Bernstein, Ashkenazy, Mehta, Maazel, Muti, Ozawa, Kurt Sanderling, Temirkanov, Dohnányi, Dutoit, Gelmetti, Herbig, Tennstedt, Rattle, Haitink, Berglund, Mata, Chung, Hirokami, Fedoseyev, Ahronovitch, Welser-Most, Lazalev, Simonov, Gelmetti, Kogan, and many others, performing with the world’s leading orchestras including the Boston Symphony, Cleveland, Berlin Philharmonic, Israel Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh Symphony, Montreal Symphony, Bayerischer Rundfunk, Royal Concertgebouw and the major British Orchestras. He has regularly returned to the Miyazaki Festival since he was first asked by Isaac Stern to perform with him there in 1997. He plays chamber music with artists such as Yuri Bashmet, Mischa Maisky, Georges Pludermacher, and many others. The 2012/2013 season included several concerts in Paris, Moscow and Spain with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic and Yuri Temirkanov, and tours to South America and Spain with the Moscow Philharmonic. For the last two seasons he has been a soloist with the Moscow and St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestras under the baton of Yuri Temirkanov, as well as with the Madrid Symphony Orchestra and the National Orchestra of Catalonia with conductor Vladimir Ashkenazi. Boris Belkin has featured in several television productions which include a film on Jean Sibelius (performing the Concerto with the Swedish Radio Orchestra and Vladimir Ashkenazy), and performances with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic playing the Tchaikovsky Concerto, with Bernstein and the Orchestra National de France playing Ravel's Tzigane and with Bernard Haitink and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Mozart and Paganini’s Concerto No.1. His first recording, Paganini’s 1st Violin Concerto, was with the Israel Philharmonic and Zubin Mehta and was extremely highly praised. His other albums for Decca include the Tchaikovsky and Sibelius Concertos with The Philharmonia and Ashkenazy, Richard Strauss’s Concerto with Berlin Radio and Ashkenazy, Prokofiev’s Concertos No.1 and No.2 with the London Philharmonic under Kondrashin and Barshai, and the Brahms Concerto with the LSO and Fischer. For Denon he has recorded the Prokofiev Concertos with the Zurich Tonhalle and Michael Stern, the concertos by Sibelius, Bruch and Glazunov plus Shostakovich’s 1st Concerto with the Royal Philharmonic and Junichi Hirokami, Tchaikovsky’s Concerto with the London Philharmonic conducted by Michael Stern, Mozart’s Concerto in A major K219 and Sinfonia Concertante with the Salzburg Chamber Soloists and Brahms’ Sonatas with Michel Dalberto. Boris Belkin has given masterclasses at the renowned Accademia Chigiana in Siena, Italy, since 1985, and has been a lecturer at the Academy of Music in Maastricht, the Netherlands, since 1997.