GRINGOLTS PLAYS LOCATELLI
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The Finnish Baroque Orchestra crowned with the violinist llya Gringolts offer a concert of drama and virtuosity. Pietro Locatelli was the Paganini of the 18th century. Based in Amsterdam, the bustling heart of European music printing industry, he brought the baroque violin to a new level of dazzling virtuosity. He was drawn towards several fashionable styles of his time: the Vivaldian concerto, the Roman style of Corelli, Neapolitan opera and the new galant style of tenderness and lush melodies. The German style of Empfinsamkeit, a creation of Johann Sebastian's son Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach, was a more poignant version of the galant with its highly contrasted sound worlds and vibrant emotions. His symphonies are full of the Sturm und Drang of early classicism. Johann Adolph Hasse was one of the most popular representatives of Italian opera of his time but composed also virtuoso music for instruments, as demonstrated in his Grave and Fuga. Vivaldi's La Senna festeggiante, an allegorical serenata around the personified figure of the river Seine, is heavy with French inspiration. |
 Ilya Gringolts, Photo: Kaupo Kikkas |
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Programme Ilya Gringolts, violin & leading |
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"One of the most inspirational violinists today"
The Financial Times
Ilya Gringolts, Violin
Despite his youth, Ilya Gringolts can already look back on sixteen extraordinarily successful years in his violinist career. His inquisitiveness regarding new musical challenges has shown him to be an outstanding musical personality.
After studying violin and composition in Saint Petersburg with Tatiana Liberova and Jeanna Metallidi, he attended the Juilliard School of Music where he studied with Itzhak Perlman. In 1998 he won the International Violin Competition Premio Paganini, as the youngest first prize winner in the history of the competition. As a soloist he devotes himself particularly to contemporary and seldom played works. He has premiered compositions by Peter Maxwell Davies, Augusta Read Thomas, Christophe Bertrand and Michael Jarrell. In addition, he is interested in historical performance practice. At the Verbier Festival in summer 2010, he played the complete cycle of the Bach Sonatas on a baroque violin, accompanied by Masaaki Suzuki. He is also first violinist of the Gringolts Quartet, which he founded in 2008.
In the 2014/15 season Ilya Gringolts will again perform at prestigious concert halls such as Musikverein in Vienna, Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and Wigmore Hall in London. As a soloist he has been invited to perform with the orchestra of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Copenhagen Philharmonic, Adelaide Symphony and Auckland Philharmonic Orchestra, with whom he will also record the violin concerto of the New Zealander composer Ross Harris.
In the past years, Ilya Gringolts has performed with leading orchestras around the world, such as the Chicago Symphony, London Philharmonic, Saint Petersburg Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Melbourne Symphony, NHK Symphony, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Birmingham Symphony, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, BBC Symphony, Sao Paulo Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic, Hallé Orchestra and both orchestras of SWR. Highlights of the 2013/14 season included projects with the Singapore Symphony, Bamberg Symphony, Warszaw Philharmonic, BBC Scottish Symphony, Taipei Symphony and Columbus Symphony Orchestras.
Ilya Gringolts can be just as frequently heard in recital programmes. He is a regular guest at the festivals in Lucerne, Kuhmo, Colmar and Bucharest (Enescu Festival), as well as at the Serate Musicali in Milan and Saint Petersburg Philharmonic. For his chamber music projects, he collaborates with artists such as Yuri Bashmet, Lynn Harrell, Diemut Poppen, Nicolas Angelich, Itamar Golan, Peter Laul, Nicholas Hodges and Jörg Widmann.
After numerous critically praised recordings for Deutsche Grammophon, BIS and Hyperion, Ilya Gringolts has with three recent releases on the Onyx label, devoted himself to the music of Robert Schumann: the violin sonatas 1-3 with Peter Laul (2010), the piano trios, played with Dmitry Kouzov and Peter Laul (2011), and the string quartets and piano quintet with the Gringolts Quartet and Peter Laul (2011). Last year his recording of the 24 caprices for solo violin by Paganini on Orchid Classics (2013) received many outstanding reviews, including in The Strad and Gramophone. In 2006, the CD Taneyev – Chamber Music together with Mikhail Pletnev, Vadim Repin, Nobuko Imai and Lynn Harrell received a Gramophone Award.
Apart from his position as violin professor at the Zurich Academy of the Arts, he is also a Violin International Fellow at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow. Ilya Gringolts plays a 1718-1720 Stradivarius, which was made available to him by a private collection.