Valeriy Sokolov

Born in 1986 in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Valeriy Sokolov began playing violin at the age of five and was admitted to the conservatory of his native city at the age of nine; at 11, he appeared as a soloist with orchestra for the first time in Vieuxtemps’s Fifth Violin Concerto. In 1999, he won the “Grand Prix” at the Sarasate Competition in Pamplona, which also entailed a scholarship to continue his studies with Natalia Boyarsky at the Yehudi Menuhin School in England. He deepened his technical and interpretive skills through master classes with Mark Lu-botsky, Ana Chumachenco, Gidon Kremer, and Boris Kuschnir. In 2005, Sokolov won the International Enescu Violin Competition in Bucharest and launched his international career. He has since performed with the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, the Rotterdam and Oslo Philharmonics, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris, and the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, among others. Performances have taken him to the Verbier and Lockenhaus festivals, the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, Wigmore Hall in London, New York’s Lincoln Center, the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, the Musikverein in Vienna, and Munich’s Prinzregententheater. In the 2022-23 season, Sokolov was artist-in-residence with the Filarmonica Arturo Toscanini, where he performed solo concertos and chamber music. He also played the Sibelius Concerto with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra under Santtu-Matias Rouvali and appeared with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo and the Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra. Valeriy Sokolov has recorded the Sibelius Concerto with Vladimir Ashkenazy and concertos by Bartók and Tchaikovsky with David Zinman. Bruno Monsaingeon made a film about him titled The Violin in the Soul. His most recent release includes accounts of chamber music works by Erwin Schulhoff.

Lucerne Festival debut on 31 August 2017, when he made his debut as part of the “Debut” series with a program of works by Bach, Prokofiev, and Saint-Saëns.

July 2023