Globally renowned violinist and conductor
Achievements

Globally renowned violinist and conductor

Leonidas Kavakos is a globally renowned violinist and conductor. He has made appearances with the best world orchestras on the most famous world stages.

He was born in Athens on October 30th, 1967, into a musical family and first learned to play the violin at the age of 5. He later enrolled in the National Conservatory of Athens. An Onassis Foundation scholarship enabled him to attend master classes with Professor Josef Gingold at Indiana University.

 

 

He made his concert debut at the Athens Festival in 1984. In 1985, at age 18, he won the International Sibelius Competition in Helsinki and in 1986 he won the silver medal in the Indianapolis International Violin Competition. He also took first prizes at the Naumburg Competition in New York in 1988 and the Paganini Violin Competition during the same year.

His young age success permitted the recording of Sibelius Violin Concerto. In 1991, he won the Gramophone Concerto of the Year Award, best known as the Oscar Award for classical music. Moreover, he won his second Gramophone Concerto Award in September 2014 and was named Artist of the Year.

He has also received a Grammy 2014 Award nomination for his Beethoven: Violin Sonatas in the Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance category.

 

 

«I strongly believe there is no way to success for anyone by himself. I want to really mention and thank those people who have been close to me, all the people I have had the privilege to make music with”, he mentioned in a former interview.

He has been named the winner of the Léonie Sonning Music Prize 2017, worth DKK 600,000 (€80,000). The award is Denmark’s highest musical honour and has been given annually to an internationally recognised composer, instrumentalist, conductor or singer since 1959.

He has developed close relationships with the world’s major orchestras, such as the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig/Chailly, the London Symphony Orchestra/Gergiev, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Scala Philharmonic Orchestra of Milan, the New York Philharmonic and Alan Gilbert, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Since 2012, Leonidas Kavakos has been an exclusive Decca Classics recording artist. Despite his heavy schedule abroad, Kavakos maintains close bonds with Greece, by having been working in cooperation with The Athens Concert Hall Megaron during the past 15 years.

COMMENTS

  Comments: 1

  1. Irina Dragneva

    Ο πιο σπουδαίος πρεσβευτής του πολιτισμού της Ελλάδος στα τελευταία 30 χρόνια που βρίσκομαι στην χώρα.


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