One can hardly play the violin more expressively and uncompromisingly than Gringolts. Süddeutsche Zeitung, Harald Eggebrecht

Ilya Gringolts wins over audiences with his highly virtuosic playing and sophisticated interpretations and is always seeking out new musical challenges. As a sought-after soloist, Ilya Gringolts devotes himself to the great orchestral repertoire as well as to contemporary and rare works; he is also interested in historical performance practices. His concert programmes include virtuosic early repertoire by Leclair and Locatelli as well as Paganini’s solo and orchestral works. New works by Peter Maxwell Davies, Augusta Read Thomas, Christophe Bertrand, Bernhard Lang, Beat Furrer and Michael Jarrell have been premiered by him. In the summer of 2020, Ilya Gringolts and Ilan Volkov founded the I&I Foundation for the promotion of contemporary music, which awards commissions to young composers.

Ilya Gringolts started into the 2023/24 season with an extensive tour to Australia and New Zealand. Further collaborations this season include appearances with the Hungarian National Symphony Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala, and Brussels Philharmonic. Committing himself to historical informed repertoire, new projects will feature concertos by Mendelssohn with La Scintilla and by Sibelius with Finnish Baroque Orchestra. He will also premiere new works by Lotta Wennäkoski, Chaya Czernowin, Boris Filanovsky and Mirela Ivicevic.

Ilya Gringolts has performed with renowned orchestras such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, NHK Symphony Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. Recent highlights have been joint projects with the Bavarian Radio Symphony, the Santa Cecilia Orchestra Rome, the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, the Wiener Symphoniker, the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, the Bamberger Symphoniker, the Oslo Philharmonic, the, the Helsinki Philharmonic, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Budapest Festival Orchestra,the Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire and the National Symphony Orchestra Taiwan. From his violin, he has recently conducted projects with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana, the Camerata Bern, and Ensemble Resonanz.

For his Diapason d’Or and Gramophone Editor’s Choice Award-winning recording of Locatelli’s Il labirinto armonico (2021), Ilya Gringolts also led the Finnish Baroque Orchestra from the instrument. This was followed in the same year by the solo CD Ciaccona with works by Bach, Pauset, Gerhard, and Holliger, which also received the Gramophone Editor’s Choice Award. His extensive discography of highly acclaimed CD productions for Deutsche Grammophon, BIS, and Hyperion, among others, also includes the critically acclaimed recording of Paganini’s 24 Caprices for solo violin and the recording of the complete violin works of Stravinsky (2018), recorded with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia under Dima Slobodeniouk and awarded the Diapason d’Or.

As first violinist of the Gringolts Quartet, he has enjoyed great success at the Salzburg Festival, Lucerne Festival, Edinburgh Festival, 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 Nicolas Altstaedt, Alexander Lonquich, Peter Laul, Aleksandar Madzar, Christian Poltera, Lawrence Power and Jörg Widmann.

After studying violin and composition with Tatiani Liberova and Zhanneta Metallidi 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; he was also named a BBC New Generation Artist at the outset of his career. 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.

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General management Karsten Witt
France : Little Tribeca

“Ilya Gringolts is once again the intrepid and ingenious interpreter of these new sounds.
The intensity with which he throws himself into the composed abysses with seemingly limitless technical possibilities is phenomenal.”

Robert Jungwirth, Klassikinfo.de

“There are many performers who manipulate the superlative, but when they reach the extreme of the superlative, the superlative does not sound so, and Ilya Gringolts situation was in that realm.”

Toshio Saito, Mercure des Arts (Japan)

“As it unfolded, it seemed tailor-made for Gringolts’ mastery of the expressive qualities of his instrument, from the otherworldliness of harmonics to the rustic colours of folk song and the dark echo of Baroque refinement.”

Christopher Woodley, BACHTRACK

Discography

Bach, Gerhard, Holliger, Pauset – Cicaccona BIS Records, 2021 BIS-2525 SACD

Il Labirinto Armonico BIS Records, 2021, BIS2445

Stravinsky – Music for Violin Vol. 2 BIS Records, 2018, BIS2275

Eisler – Ravel – Widmann Duos Delos, 2019, DE3556

Programs 2024-2025

Solo

Salvatore Sciarrino: Sei Capricci and Altri Capricci (World Premiere 2023) Solo works by J.S. Bach, Pisendel, Guillemain

Duo I – With Masato Suzuki (harpsichord)

J.-P. Rameau: Solo work for harpsichord J.-M. Leclair: Sonata for violin and harpsichord F. Couperin: Concerto for violin and harpsichord L.-G. Guillemain: Solo work for violin J.-M. Leclair: Sonata for violin and harpsichord

Duo II – With Peter Laul (Piano)

W. A. Mozart: Sonata in A major KV 526 E. W. Korngold: Sonata in G major Op. 6 A. Dvorak: Sonatine in G major Op.100

Trio I with Peter Laul (piano) and Dmitry Kouzov (cello)

L. v. Beethoven: Piano trio in G major Op. 1 no. 2 H. Holliger: New work R. Schumann: Piano trio no. 1 in D minor Op.63

Trio II – With Maximilian Hornung (cello) and James Boyd (viola)

Ernö Dohnanyi: Serenade Dieter Ammann: Gehörte Form Zoltán Kodály: Intermezzo L. v. Beethoven: String trio in C minor Op. 9 no.3