At a very young age, LIYA PETROVA (b. 1990) became a laureate of numerous international competitions. Her international breakthrough came in 2016, when she won First Prize at the Carl Nielsen Competition in Denmark, under the baton of Nikolaj Szeps‑Znaider. Two years later she recorded Nielsen’s Violin Concerto and Prokofiev’s First Violin Concerto with the Odense Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Kristiina Poska. This debut album earned her wide international acclaim: The Sunday Times and Pizzicato praised her tone as “silvery and pure, with a magnificent breadth of phrasing,” while Gramophone highlighted her exceptional “tonal variety.”
As a soloist, Liya Petrova has appeared with many leading orchestras, including the Orchestre de Paris, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, the Flanders Symphony Orchestra, the Luxembourg Philharmonic, the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Staatskapelle Weimar, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the Monte‑Carlo Philharmonic, the Brussels Philharmonic, the NDR Philharmonic, the Orchestre National de Lyon, the Orchestre National de Bordeaux, the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, the China National Philharmonic Orchestra, the Warsaw Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire, and the Odense Symphony Orchestra, among others.
She has collaborated with leading conductors including Elim Chan, Stanisław Kochanowski, Philippe Herreweghe, Krzysztof Penderecki, Tan Dun, Nikolaj Szeps‑Znaider, Duncan Ward, Michel Tabachnik, Yan Tortelier, Xian Zhang, Ariane Matiakh, Roberto Minasi, Christopher Warren‑Green, Michael Haefliger, Kirill Karabits, and Jesús López Cobos.
Liya Petrova is also an active chamber musician. She regularly performs with pianist Alexandre Kantorow and has partnered with many distinguished artists, among them Martha Argerich, Renaud and Gautier Capuçon, Augustin Dumay, Beatrice Rana, Emmanuel Pahud, Pablo Ferrández, Yuri Bashmet, Mischa Maisky, James Ehnes, Yuja Wang, Nicolas Angelich, Frank Braley, Gérard Caussé, Antoine Tamestit, Bruno Philippe, Aurélien Pascal, and others.
She is a frequent guest at major chamber music festivals, including Mecklenburg‑Vorpommern, Rheingau, and Ludwigsburg, La Folle Journée in Nantes, La Roque d’Anthéron, Rencontres Musicales in Evian, and the Easter Festival in Aix‑en‑Provence. In July 2025 she made her solo debut at the renowned BBC Proms in London.
In 2020, during the COVID‑19 pandemic, Liya Petrova founded the chamber music festival La Musikfest Parisienne, which provides a platform for outstanding young musicians of the new generation. That same year she began recording for the French label Mirare and has since released four albums. Her most recent releases, Momentum 1 (2023) and Momentum 2 (2025), have been highly acclaimed by critics. In these recordings she partners with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Duncan Ward. Momentum 1 features William Walton’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra and Ottorino Respighi’s Sonata for Violin and Piano with pianist Adam Laloum, while Momentum 2 presents Erich Korngold’s Violin Concerto and Richard Strauss’s Sonata for Violin and Piano with pianist Alexandre Kantorow.
Liya Petrova was born in Sofia into a family of musicians. At the age of six she made her debut at Bulgaria Hall as a soloist with the Sofia Soloists Chamber Ensemble under the baton of Plamen Djourov. Two years later she received the Mozart Medal and was named UNESCO’s “Youngest Artist.” A pupil of Evelina Arabadjieva at the Lyubomir Pipkov National Music School in Sofia, she was accepted at the age of eleven into the Rostock University of Music and Theatre to study with Petru Munteanu. She subsequently continued her training at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel in Brussels with Augustin Dumay, at the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music in Berlin with Antje Weithaas, and at the Haute École de Musique in Lausanne with Renaud Capuçon. In 2007 she was voted “Young Musician of the Year” by listeners of Bulgarian National Radio’s Allegro Vivace program.
Liya Petrova performs on a Guarneri del Gesù “Consolo” violin from 1733, generously provided by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Bulgaria, and on a 1727 Antonio Stradivari violin, entrusted to her by a private sponsor.
