Professor Boris Kuschnir - Vienna 2013

Boris Kuschnir was born into a music fam­ily in Kiev in 1948. He stud­ied violin with Boris Belenky at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Con­ser­vatoire and cham­ber music with Valentin Ber­l­in­sky of the Borodin Quar­tet.

His many encoun­ters with Dmitri Shos­takovich (work­ing on his last quar­tets) and David Ois­trakh, with whom he also stud­ied, had a last­ing influ­ence on his artistic devel­op­ment. His career star­ted 1969 when he was one of the three win­ners of the Allunions-Competition in Len­in­grad where, in the final, he per­formed the Beeth­oven Violin Con­certo with the Len­in­grad Sym­phony Orches­tra under the baton of Yuri Temirkanov.

He has won numer­ous prizes at inter­na­tional violin and cham­ber music com­pet­i­tions (Paris, Bel­grade, Sion, Trapani, Brat­is­lava, Florence, Trieste, Gor­izia, Ham­burg, Ver­celli). In 1970 he foun­ded the Moscow String Quar­tet and remained a mem­ber until 1979.

 

Since 1981 he has been liv­ing in Austria. He became an Aus­trian cit­izen in 1982 and was the first con­cert­mas­ter of the Bruck­ner Orches­tra in Linz until 1983. In 1984, he became a Pro­fessor at the Kon­ser­vat­orium Wien Uni­ver­sity and also a dis­tin­guished Pro­fessor at the Uni­ver­sity of Music in Graz in 1999. His repu­ta­tion as a teacher won inter­na­tional recog­ni­tion with the recent out­stand­ing suc­cess of his pupils, Julian Rach­lin (1st Prize Euro­vi­sion Grand Prix for Young Musi­cians, Ams­ter­dam 1988), Nikolaj Znaider (1st Prize of the Queen Elisa­beth Com­pet­i­tion, Brus­sels 1997), Lidia Baich (1st Prize Euro­vi­sion Grand Prix for Young Musi­cians, Vienna 1998), Dalibor Kar­vay (1st Prize Euro­vi­sion Grand Prix for Young Musi­cians, Ber­lin 2002; 1. Prize Inter­na­tional Tibor Varga Com­pet­i­tion, Switzer­land 2003; 1st Prize David Ois­trakh Com­pet­i­tion, Moscow 2008),Alex­an­dra Soumm (1st Prize Euro­vi­sion Grand Prix for Young Musi­cians, Lucerne 2004), Lorenzo Gatto (2nd Prize Queen Eliza­beth Com­pet­i­tion, Brus­sels 2009), Pavel Mily­ukov (1st Prize Aram Khachaturian Inter­na­tional Com­pet­i­tion, 2012, 2nd Prize Seoul Inter­na­tional Music Com­pet­i­tion, 2012), Eugene Chep­ovet­sky (2nd Prize David Ois­trakh Inter­na­tional Com­pet­i­tion, Moscow 2008), and Aleksey Igudes­man (Igudes­man & Joo).

 

In addi­tion to this he edu­cated more than 40 laur­eates of national and inter­na­tional com­pet­i­tions, his pupils have been appoin­ted Pro­fess­ors at Uni­ver­sit­ies, play­ing in vari­ous cham­ber music ensembles and orches­tras of the world – 5 of his stu­dents play at the Vienna Philharmonics.

 

At the same time he con­stantly gives mas­ter­classes and is a jury mem­ber of vari­ous inter­na­tional music com­pet­i­tions such as Queen Eliza­beth Com­pet­i­tion in Brus­sels, Tchaikovsky Com­pet­i­tion in Moscow, the Inter­na­tional Violin Com­pet­i­tion of Indi­ana­polis, Nic­colò Paganini Com­pet­i­tion in Genua, theJacques Thibaud Com­pet­i­tion in Paris, Joseph Joachim Com­pet­i­tion in Han­nover, Tibor Varga Com­pet­i­tion in Switzer­land, Michael Hill Com­pet­i­tion in New Zea­l­and, Euro­vi­sion Com­pet­i­tion, David Ois­trakh Com­pet­i­tion in Moscow, Pablo de Sarasate Com­pet­i­tion in Pamplona, George Enescu Com­pet­i­tion in Bucharest, Seoul Inter­na­tional Music Com­pet­i­tion, Violin Mas­ters in Monte Carlo and the Aram Khachaturian Inter­na­tional Com­pet­i­tion in Jerewan.

 

In 1984 Boris Kuschnir foun­ded the Wiener Schubert Trio which received many pres­ti­gi­ous awards, among them the 1. Prize at the inter­na­tional Cham­ber Music Com­pet­i­tion Ser­gio Lorenzi in Trieste, Italy with Sandor Vegh as pres­id­ent of the jury, the Moz­art Inter­pret­a­tion­spreis 1988 in Vienna and the Prize of the Ernst von Siemens Found­a­tion 1990. Boris Kuschnir played as a soloist and a cham­ber musi­cian in some of the world’s most illus­tri­ous ven­ues: Wiener Musik­ver­ein, Teatro alla Scala in Milan, La Fenice in Venice, the Wig­more Hall Lon­don, the Con­cer­t­ge­bouw in Ams­ter­dam, the Ber­lin Phil­har­monic Hall, the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris, as well as in the Hall of the Tchaikovsky Con­ser­vatoire Moscow, the Ishi­bashi Memorial Hall and the Sun­tory Hall in Tokyo. He has taken part in numer­ous fest­ivals such as Salzburg Fest­ival, Gidon Kremer’s Lock­en­haus Fest­ival, Vienna Fest­ival, Bes­ançon, Wah­ing­ton, Spo­leto, Naples, Stresa, Bre­genz Fest­ival, Mecklenburg-Vorpommen, Decem­ber Even­ing (Swi­atoslaw Richter Winterfestival)  –  Moscow, White Nights – St. Peters­burg, Julian Rach­lin & Friends Fest­ival  –  Dubrovnik, Ver­bier Festival  –  Switzerland.

 

Boris Kuschnir appears with such illus­tri­ous part­ners as Elisa­beth Leon­skaja, Boris Bere­zovsky, Leif Ove Andsnes, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Itamar Golan, Stefan Vladar, Elena Bashkirova, Julian Rach­lin, Nikolaj Znaider, Maxim Ven­gerov, Dmitry Sitkovet­sky, Renaud Capu­con, David Gar­rett, Yuri Bash­met, Gérard Caussé, Nobuko Imai, Lawrence Power, Ver­onika Hagen, David Car­penter, Mis­cha Maisky, Boris Perga­menschikow, Nat­alia Gut­man, Miklós Perényi, Steven Isser­lis, Gau­tier Capuçon, Sol Gabetta, Jean-Guihen Queyras, Ivan Moni­ghetti and Hatto Bey­erle, Thomas Kak­uska, Valentin Erben of Alban Berg Quar­tet.

 

Both as soloist and cham­ber musi­cian Boris Kuschnir made numer­ous record­ings, not­ably the com­plete Moz­art piano trios for EMI, which were released in the Moz­art year 1991. In 1993 he foun­ded the Vienna Brahms Trio which made their highly acclaimed debut at the Gidon Kremer’s Lock­en­haus Fest­ival in Aus­tria. In 1996, the Trio won First Prize at the 9th Inter­na­tional Cham­ber Music Com­pet­i­tion in Illzach, France. Their record­ing of Schumann’s com­plete works for Piano trio was released on the Naxos label in 1999.

He was co-founder of the Kopel­man Quar­tet in 2003 with which he is giv­ing con­cert all over the world since and has released CDs at Nim­bus Records and Wig­more Hall Live.

 

In 2008 the Pres­id­ent of the Repub­lic of Aus­tria awar­ded Boris Kuschnir with the “Grand Dec­or­a­tion of Hon­our in Sil­ver for Ser­vices to the Repub­lic of Austria”.

Boris Kuschnir plays a violin made by Ant­o­nio Stra­di­vari – “La Rouse-Boughton” – made in Cre­mona, 1698. It was given to him as a loan in 1991 by theAus­trian National Bank in recog­ni­tion of his artistic per­form­ance and his ser­vice rendered to music.

 

 

 

 

official website:   http://www.boriskuschnir.com