Photo: Kaupo Kikkas
One can hardly play the violin more expressively and uncompromisingly than Gringolts.
(Süddeutsche Zeitung)
The Russian violinist Ilya Gringolts wins over audiences with his incredibly skillful playing and sensitive interpretations and is always seeking out new musical challenges. As a sought-after soloist, Ilya Gringolts devotes himself to virtuosic early repertoire by Tartini, Leclair, and Locatelli as well as to premiering contemporary music. The 2020/21 season includes world premieres of works by Bernhard Lang, Beat Furrer, and Nicolaus Richter de Vroe.
The violinist kicks off the season with the Munich Chamber Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra Taiwan, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire, the Orchestra della Toscana, the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra, the Deutsche Radiophilharmonie Kaiserslautern Saarbrücken, and the Musikkollegium Winterthur. From the instrument he conducts projects with the Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra and the Arctic Philharmonic.
Ilya Gringolts has performed with leading orchestras around the world such as the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, NHK Symphony Orchestra, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, and SWR Symphony (Southwest German Radio). Recent highlights include projects with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, City of Birmingham Symphony, Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia, and Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.
As first violinist of the Gringolts Quartet, he has enjoyed great success at the festivals of Salzburg, Lucerne and Edinburgh, at Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Philharmonie Luxembourg, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, and Teatro La Fenice in Venice. A highly esteemed chamber musician, Ilya Gringolts regularly collaborates with artists such as Itamar Golan, Peter Laul, Nicolas Altstaedt, Christian Poltera, David Kadouch, Antoine Tamestit, and Jörg Widmann.
Ilya Gringolts has made numerous critically hailed recordings on Deutsche Grammophon, BIS, Hyperion and Onyx, and received outstanding reviews for his recording of Paganini’s 24 Caprices for solo violin. In 2018 his recording of the violin works of Stravinsky was awarded the Diapason d’Or. In 2021 his recording of Locatelli concertos will be released, for which he will conduct the Finnish Baroque Orchestra from the instrument.
After studying violin and composition in St. Petersburg, he attended the Juilliard School of Music, where he studied with Itzhak Perlman. He won the International Violin Competition Premio Paganini (1998) and is still the youngest winner in the competition’s history. In addition to his professor position at the Zurich University of the Arts, Ilya Gringolts was appointed to the renowned Accademia Chigiana in Siena in 2021.
He plays a Stradivari (1718 “ex-Prové”) violin.
In summer 2020 Ilya Gringolts and Ilan Volkov founded the I&I Foundation for the promotion of contemporary music.
