LIYA PETROVA was revealed to the international scene in 2016 when she took First Prize at the Carl Nielsen competition in Denmark, chaired by Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider. Two years later, she recorded the Nielsen and Prokofiev’s first concertos with the Odense Philharmonic and Estonian conductor Kristiina Poska for Orchid Classics. This first album earned her international acclaim from the press : London’s Sunday Times admired her “gorgeous sound – ripe and silvery, phrasing with majestic breadth“, Pizzicato in Germany also qualifies her sound as “silvery and clean”, while Gramophone praised her “exceptional tonal variety” in “a marvelous disc”. The Strad was impressed by her “natural virtuosity” while Classical Music magazine finds her interpretation of the Nielsen Concerto “staggeringly good” and “intensely lyrical”.
As a soloist, Petrova is the guest of orchestras such as the Orchestre de Paris, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, Antwerp Symphony, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Symfonieorkest Vlaanderen, Staatskapelle Weimar, Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo, Brussels Philharmonic, Norddeutsche Philharmonie, Kansai Philharmonic, Orchestre National de Lyon, Orchestre National de Bordeaux, Orchestre National des Pays de Loire, Sinfonia Varsovia, Odense Symphony Orchestra, with such leading conductors as Elim Chan, Stanislav Kochanovsky, Duncan Ward, Philippe Herreweghe, Krzysztof Penderecki, Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider, Marzena Diakun, Yan Tortelier, Xian Zhang , Ariane Matiakh, Roberto Minasi, Christopher Warren-Green, Michel Tabachnik or Jesús López Cobos.
She plays chamber music regularly with French Tchaikovsky competition 1st prize winner Alexandre Kantorow and performs with many wonderful musicians like Beatrice Rana, Emmanuel Pahud, Pablo Ferrandez, Martha Argerich, Yuri Bashmet, Mischa Maisky, Renaud Capuçon, Augustin Dumay, James Ehnes, Nicholas Angelich, Frank Braley, Yuja Wang, Antoine Tamestit, Bruno Philippe, Aurélien Pascal and Gautier Capuçon. Liya Petrova is a regular guest of chamber music festivals like the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festspiele, Rheingau Festival, Ludwigsburger Schlossfestspiele, Aix-en-Provence Easter Festival, La Folle Journée, La Roque d’Anthéron International Festival and the Rencontres Musicales d’Evian.
Since 2020 she has released three albums with the Mirare label, the latest of which Momentum received BBC Music Magazine and Gramophone Editor’s Choice Magazine’s most prestigious global critics’ awards.
Liya Petrova was born in Bulgaria into a family of musicians. She began her music education in violin in Lubomir Pipkov National School of Music in Sofia in the class of Ass. Prof. Evelina Arabadzhieva. She studied with Augustin Dumay at Brussels’ Chapelle Musicale Reine Elisabeth, Antje Weithaas at the Hochschule für Musik Hans Eisler Berlin and Renaud Capuçon at the Haute Ecole de Musique in Lausanne.She is currently living in Paris.
She plays the Rovelli violin, a magnificent instrument created in Cremona in 1742 by the famous Giuseppe Guarneri Del Gesù, generously provided to her by private sponsors.