Gidon KREMER, violin

Gidon Kremer was born in Riga in 1947. For 25 years of his career Gidon Kremer has established a worldwide reputation as one of the most original and compelling artists of his generation. Gidon Kremer began to study the violin at the age of four and in 1965 he was accepted as a pupil of David Oistrakh at the Moscow Conservatory. He won a lot of prestigious awards at competitions, including the International Tchaikovsky Competitions in Moscow and the Paganini Competition in Genoa, as well as different music awards. He appeared on every major concert stage with the European and American greatest orchestras and made recordings with such today's foremost conductors as Leonard Berstein, Christoph Zshenbach, Nicolaus Garmonkort, Herbert von Karajan, Riccardo Mutti. These recordings won many international awards. His repertoire is unusually extensive, encompassing all of the outstanding violin works. He has also championed the works of living Russian and Eastern European composers (several compositions dedicated to him).
Deeply committed to chamber music, in 1981 Gidon Kremer founded a chamber music festival in Lockenhaus, Austria, which is the realization of the violinist's belief that music can overcome all barriers of language and culture. Renamed the KremerATA Musica in 1992, the festival continued its innovative programming. On the occasion of 200th anniversary of Franz Schubert in 1997 they toured all over the Europe including performances at the Festival in Salzburg.
Gidon Kremer recorded over 100 compact-discs. In November 1996, he founded the KremerATA Baltica, a string orchestra of young musicians from the Baltic States. He regularly tours with this orchestra in Europe, the USA and Asia.