Leonidas Kavakos

The three important mentors in his life have been Stelios Kafantaris, Josef Gingold and Ferenc Rados. By the age of 21, Leonidas Kavakos had already won three major competitions, the Sibelius Competition in 1985, and the Paganini and Naumburg competitions in 1988. This success led to him recording the original Sibelius Violin Concerto (1903/4), the first recording of this work in history, and which won Gramophone Concerto of the Year Award in 1991.

Leonidas Kavakos has been announced as the winner of the Léonie Sonning Music Prize 2017. This prestigious prize is Denmark’s highest musical honour and is awarded annually to an internationally recognised composer, instrumentalist, conductor or singer. Previous winners include Leonard Bernstein, Benjamin Britten, Arthur Rubinstein, Yehudi Menuhin, Dmitri Shostakovich, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Mstislav Rostropovich, Pierre Boulez, György Ligeti, Alfred Brendel, Daniel Barenboim and Simon Rattle.

Over the years Kavakos has developed close relationships with a number of orchestras and conductors, incuding the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra (Eschenbach/Chailly) Berliner Philharmoniker (Rattle), Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (Jansons/Gatti), London Symphony Orchestra (Gergiev/Rattle/Harding), Gewandhausorchester Leipzig (Chailly), Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, and Orchestre de Paris. Kavakos also works closely with the Dresden Staatskapelle, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. Budapest Festival Orchestra, Academia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala and, in the USA, with the Philadelphia Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony and Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestras.

In the 2016/17 season Leonidas Kavakos will be Artist in Residence with the New York Philharmonic. His residency will feature his conducting debut with the orchestra, and three solo appearances including the world premiere of Lera Auerbach’s Violin Concerto No. 3 which will be conducted by Alan Gilbert.

Latterly, Leonidas Kavakos has built a strong profile as a conductor, and has conducted the London Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Wiener Symphoniker (VSO) and Budapest Festival orchestras. This season, he will conduct the Gürzenich Orchester, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Filarmonica Teatro La Fenice, and Houston Symphony.

As an exclusive recording artists with Decca Classics, his first release was Beethoven Violin Sonatas with Enrico Pace (January 2013), which was awarded the ECHO Klassik ‘Instrumentalist of the Year’. This was followed by the Brahms Violin Concerto with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig and Riccardo Chailly (October 2013), and Brahms Violin Sonatas with Yuja Wang, (March 2014). He was awarded Gramophone Artist of the Year 2014.

Leonidas Kavakos’ earlier discography encompases recordings for BIS, ECM, and subsequently, for Sony Classical, Mendelssohn Violin Concerto (ECHO Klassik ‘Best Concerto Recording’) and Mozart’s Violin Concertos, conducting and playing with Camerata Salzburg.

Born and brought up in a musical family in Athens and still resident there, Kavakos curates an annual violin and chamber-music masterclass in Athens, attracting violinists and ensembles from all over the world and reflecting his deep commitment to the handing on of musical knowledge and traditions. Part of this tradition is the art of violin- and bow-making, which Kavakos regards as a great mystery and, to this day, an undisclosed secret. He plays the ‘Abergavenny’ Stradivarius violin of 1724 and owns modern violins made by F. Leonhard, S.P. Greiner, E. Haahti and D. Bagué.