Hommage à Heifetz
Competition Jury
Gidon Kremer, chairperson
Latvia
Gidon Kremer is a world-famous violinist, and one of the most distinguished artists of his generation. He was born in Riga, and started playing the violin at the age of four under the guidance of his father and grandfather. At the age of 16, he won the prestigeous Prize of the Republic of Latvia, and two years later he began his studies at the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory under the legendary violinist Professor David Oistrakh. Kremer’s career has been distinguished by various awards, including the Queen Elisabeth Award, and first prize in the Niccolo Paganini and Piotr Tchaikovsky international competitions. In 1976, after recording Brahms’ Violin concerto in D Major, the legendary German conductor Herbert von Karajan acclaimed Kremer as the best violinist in the world. Over his long musical career, Kremer has played with the most famous European and American orchestras and conductors. His repertoire is very wide, from wellknown Classical and Romantic compositions to the most interesting works of the 20th and 21st centuries. Kremer performs works by distinguished contemporary composers such as Arvo Pärt, Peter Vask, Sofia Gubaidulina, Valentin Silvestrov, Luigi Nono, John Adams, Michael Nyman and Philip Glass. He is known as a performer of new East European and Russian music. Many composers have dedicated new works specially to Gidon Kremer. In 1997 the violinist established the Kremerata Baltica chamber orchestra, which opened up a unique opportunity to improve the young talent of the Baltic countries. This company, together with its founder, has been involved in giving perfomances at various festivals for two decades. In 2002, Kremerata Baltica won a Grammy Award for its Nonesuch recording After Mozart in the Best Small Ensemble Performance category. In 2016, Kremer was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre. He also won the prestigious Praemium Imperiale award of the Japanese Association of Arts the same year.
*Maestro will assess only the Finalists of the competition
Ingrida Armonaitė-Galinienė
Lithuania
The violinist Ingrida Armonaitė-Galinienė is a graduate of the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory, where she was taught by professors Igor Bezrodny and Valery Klimov. While studying at the National M. K. Čiurlionis School of Art, she won the International Jaroslav Kocian Young Violinists Competition in the Czech Republic. In 1985, she won the first Prize in the International Vaclav Huml Violin Competition in Zagreb. Since 1988, she has been teaching at the National M. K. Čiurlionis School of Art and the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre. Since 2010 she has been chair of the academy’s Department of Strings. Ingrida Armonaitė-Galinienė’s repertoire is full of musical works from different periods. She performs compositions by Classical, Romantic and modern composers. She actively promotes music by contemporary Lithuanian composers, performing and editing them herself. In 2011, she was awarded a Golden Disc by the Associacion of Musicians of Lithuania.
Friedemann Eichhorn
Germany
Friedemann Eichhorn, a professor at the Franz Liszt Music School in Weimar, is a well-known German violinist. He studied music at Mannheim, where his teacher was Valery Gradov. He continued his studies under Albert Lysy in Switzerland, and a ended master-classes given by Margaret Pardee, Earl Carlyss, Samuel Sanders and Miguel Harth-Bedoy at the prestigious Juilliard school. Eichhorn also studied musicology and law at the Johannes Gutenberg University, where he defended his doctoral thesis. He frequently gives concerts with the most famous orchestras in the world. He has performed with the St Petersburg Philharmonic and St Petersburg symphony orchestras, and the Munich and Hamburg symphony orchestras. He has performed together with conductors such as Lord Yeduhi Menuhin, Howard Gri.ths and Jac van Steen, and played in various chamber music groups with Yuri Bashmet, Gidon Kremer and Igor Oistrakh. Eichhorn has made a number of recordings, such as new performances of François Servais, Friedrich Hermann, Arnold Mendelssohn and Johann Senfter. He directs violin perfection courses at the international Mozarteum Summer Academy in Salzburg, and at the Gustav Mahler Academy in Bozen. He is head of MA studies at the Kronberg Academy, and artistic director of the International Louis Spohr Competition for Young Violinists. Another of his activities is conducting. He has conducted the Mannheim Chamber Music and Gustav Mahler Youth orchestras.
Rūta Lipinaitytė-Savickienė
Lithuania
Rūta Lipinaitytė is one of the most distinguished violinists in Lithuania. She was the winner of the First International Jascha Heifetz Competition for Young Violinists. Today she is a well-known artist, head of the Department of Strings at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, and an associate professor. Lipinaitytė is a member of various chamber music ensembles, expressing herself in the performance of contemporary academic music. She studied at the National M. K. Čiurlionis School of Art and the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, and a ended perfection classes at Malmo Music Academy, in the class of Aleksandr Fischer. She later studied at the National Conservatoire of Music and Dance in Paris under Professor Boris Garlitsky. She gained her doctoral degree from the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre, defending her thesis on the theme of orchestral conducting and interpretation. Lipinaitytė played in Gidon Kremer’s Kremerata Baltica from the formation of the orchestra until 2014, taking part in organising concerts for the orchestra. As a solo violinist, she has played with the Dresden, Brno and Qatar Philharmonic orchestras, Croatiaradio and Zagreb Symphony Orchestra, the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra, Kremerata Baltica, the St Christopher, Klaipėda, Šiauliai and Tallinn chamber oschestras, the Moscow Four Seasons Chamber Orchestra, the Lithuanian and Estonian Music Academy symphony orchestras, and the International Youth Orchestra in Bukov. Lipinaitytė is one of the founders of the Harps platform, under the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, dedicated to supervising performance and arts studies. She also heads a cultural development project called The Polifunctionality of a Performer in Musical, Cultural and Social Processes.
Petras Radzevičius
Lithuania
Petras Radzevičius is a professor in the Department of Strings at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, and the initiator of the International Jascha Heifetz Competition. He graduated from the Lithuanian State Conservatory (now the LMTA), and continued his studies at the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory and the Hanns Eisler School of Music in Berlin. In 1963, he started teaching in the Department of Strings at the LMTA, and headed it from 1987 to 2015. He has played solo and chamber music compositions in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Germany, France, Russia, Ukraine and the Balkan countries. Together with the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra, he has performed not only in Europe, but also in the USA, Egypt, the Republic of South Africa, Japan and the UAE. Radzevičius is known as the first performer of works by Lithuanian composers such as Valentinas Bagdonas, Teisutis Makačinas, Antanas Rekašius, Feliksas Bajoras and Bronius Kutavičius. He has given master-classes at the Malmö School of Music, at the National Conservatoire of Music and Dance in Paris, and other European high schools of music. He is a member of the organising committees of different national and international music competitions, and one of the judges.
Gerhard Schulz
Austria
Gerhard Schulz is an Austrian violinist who played in the prestigious Alban Berg String Quartet for three decades. He toured with the ensemble all over the world, and produced some widely recognised recordings. Born into a family of musicians, Schulz studied the violin under Franz Samohyl, Sandir Vegh and Shmuel Ashkenasi. At present, he is a professor at the Vienna Music School, and teaches chamber music in Stu gart. He dedicated almost 20 years to teaching at Cologne Conservatory. He is the founder of the Salzburg String Trio, the Dusseldorf String Quartet and the Waldstein Ensemble. In 2009, he was appointed concertmaster of the Copenhagen Philharmonic Orchestra.
Pavel Vernikov
Ukraine
Pavel Vernikov is a virtuoso violinist. He studied at the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory under David Oistrakh and Semyon Snitkowski. During his long musical career, he has won a number of awards in various international competitions, such as the Munich International Competition and the Vi orio Gui competition in Florence, where he was awarded a Grand Prix. He has performed in prestigious venues such as Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center in New York, La Salle Gaveau in Paris, and La Scala in Milan. Vernikov is not shy of combining Classical and modern music in his repertoire. He is a resident professor at Vienna Conservatory, Lausanne Music School, Fiesole Music School and Bergamo Santa Cecilia Academy, and gives master-classes all over the world. His students often win prizes at international music competitions.
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