Coup for St Magnus Festival
(Story dated: October 30, 2003)

Ilya Gringolts

St Magnus Festival have announced that 2004’s list of acts will include the young Russian virtuoso, Ilya Gringolts.

At the festival he will perform a solo recital and play the Elgar concerto with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.

Ilya is a regular at many international festivals, including La Jolla and Verbier Festival. He was one of the 12 young artists to be selected by the BBC for their New Generation Artists scheme.

This musician has had a spectacular career to date, winning the 1998 International Violin Competition Premio Paganini at age 16.

For this achievement, he was awarded two special prizes for being the youngest ever competitor to be placed in the final, and the best interpreter of Paganini’s Caprices.

Ilya studied violin and composition at the St Petersburg Special Music School and also the Juilliard School in New York.

Still only 20, he is regularly broadcast on the BBC in recital, and has appeared at the Louvres, Paris, the Wigmore Hall, the Palais des beaux Arts Brussels, the Bergen Festival and the City of London Festival.

In recent seasons Ilya has been invited to perform with impressive orchestras and conductors in America, Europe and also in the UK.

He currently records exclusively for Deutsche Grammophon and his debut recording of Tchaicovsky and Shostakovich concertos received rave reviews from critics last season.

In turn his second recording of solo Bach was released this season and won the approval of critics again.

The director of the St Magnus Festival, Glenys Hughes, told The Orcadian: “Ilya Gringolts is a wonderful young violinist and his performance of the Elgar concerto under the BBC SSO’s new chief conductor Ilan Volkov looks like being one of those very special festival occasions.

“And the amazing Russian Patriarchate Choir of Moscow giving concerts in various venues over the festival weekend, our 2004 programme is set to have something of a Russian flavour."