Leonidas Kavakos
Biography
Leonidas Kavakos is recognised across the world as a violinist and artist of rare quality, known at the highest level for his virtuosity, superb musicianship and the integrity of his playing. He works with the world’s greatest orchestras and conductors. The three important mentors in his life have been Stelios Kafantaris, Josef Gingold and Ferenc Rados. By the age of 21, Leonidas Kavakos had already won three major competitions: the Sibelius Competition in 1985, and the Paganini and Naumburg competitions in 1988. This success led to him recording the original Sibelius Violin Concerto (1903/4), the first recording of this work in history, and which won Gramophone Concerto of the Year Award in 1991. Leonidas Kavakos was the winner of the Léonie Sonning Music Prize 2017. This prestigious prize is Denmark’s highest musical honour and is awarded annually to an internationally recognised composer, instrumentalist, conductor or singer. Previous winners include Leonard Bernstein, Benjamin Britten, Arthur Rubinstein, Yehudi Menuhin, Dmitri Shostakovich, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Mstislav Rostropovich, Pierre Boulez, György Ligeti, Alfred Brendel, Daniel Barenboim and Sir Simon Rattle. In the 2017/18 season Kavakos is Artist in Residence at both the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and the Vienna Musikverein. He tours Europe with the Filharmonica della Scala and Chailly and tours Europe and Asia with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig and Blomstedt. Elsewhere, he performs widely as soloist including with the Berlin Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Czech Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, and Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Kavakos also gives the European premiere of Lera Auerbach’s Nyx: Fractured Dreams (Violin Concerto No. 4) with the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. In December 2017 Kavakos embarked on a European recital tour with Yuja Wang, and in February 2018 he tours North America performing Brahms and Schubert trios with Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax. He will also appear in recital with regular chamber music partner Enrico Pace in Asia and Europe. Latterly, Leonidas Kavakos has built a strong profile as a conductor, and has conducted the London Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Houston Symphony, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Gürzenich Orchester, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Filarmonica Teatro La Fenice, and Budapest Festival orchestras. In the 2017/18 season he will conduct the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, and Vienna Symphony. Leonidas Kavakos signed an exclusive recording contract with Sony Classical in June 2018. This signifies a welcome return to the label as Kavakos previously recorded the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, and Mozart’s Violin Concertos, conducting and playing with Camerata Salzburg. Recently, Kavakos joined Yo-Yo Ma and Emmanuel Ax for a highly successful recording of Brahms Trios for the label. Kavakos's first solo project with Sony is the Beethoven Violin Concerto which he will play and conduct with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. This will be followed by a project to record the complete Bach Solo Sonatas and Partitas. Kavakos' extensive discography also includes Beethoven Violin Sonatas with Enrico Pace (January 2013), which was awarded the ECHO Klassik ‘Instrumentalist of the Year’. This was followed by the Brahms Violin Concerto with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig and Riccardo Chailly (October 2013), Brahms Violin Sonatas with Yuja Wang, (March 2014), and Virtuoso (April 2016). He was awarded Gramophone Artist of the Year 2014. He has recorded for BIS, ECM and Decca. Born and brought up in a musical family in Athens and still resident there, Kavakos curates an annual violin and chamber-music masterclass in Athens, attracting violinists and ensembles from all over the world and reflecting his deep commitment to the handing on of musical knowledge and traditions. Part of this tradition is the art of violin and bow-making, which Kavakos regards as a great mystery and to this day, an undisclosed secret. He plays the ‘Willemotte’ Stradivarius violin of 1734 and owns modern violins made by F. Leonhard, S.P. Greiner, E. Haahti and D. Bagué.
Current album
Beethoven: Violin Concerto, Op. 61, Septet, Op. 20 & Variations on Folk Songs, Op. 105 & 107
Artists Leonidas KavakosRelease Date: 10/18/2019
What we have here is an extremely rare example of a “complete” musician among the violinists of the present day: one of the most sought-after soloists in today’s world of music, he regularly performs with leading international orchestras under the most high-profile conductors. He is also a convincing advocate of the repertory for violin and piano and in general is a passionate chamber musician. More recently, he has additionally taken up conducting. All of these aspects of Leonidas Kavakos’s artistic activities are reflected in the present double-CD featuring works by Ludwig van Beethoven. This is also the first recording by Kavakos, who was born in Greece in 1967, to be released under the terms of his new exclusive contract with Sony Classical.
It is a happy chance that the works chosen to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth are taken from each of the composer’s three creative periods. In addition to the Violin Concerto and the popular early Septet, listeners have an opportunity to discover a miniature rarity: the National Airs with Variations date from 1817–18 and were written for piano and flute or violin ad libitum. These were occasional pieces intended for the commercial music market.
Central to this release, however, is the Violin Concerto. Although Leonidas Kavakos has been performing it for many years under some of the world’s most eminent conductors, frequently conducting it from the violin, a recording of this cornerstone of the repertory and touchstone for all violinists has so far been missing from his extensive discography. Between 1985, when he was still in his late teens, and 1988 he won three important international competitions, initially making his breakthrough when he won the 1985 Sibelius Competition and following up this success by winning the 1988 Paganini Competition and the 1988 Naumburg Competition. As a recording artist Kavakos has championed not only virtuoso violin music but also all manner of rarities. The major violin concertos from Mozart to Dutilleux are currently central to his interests.
Known for his lean tone and for his emphatically clear but never over-pointed phrasing, Kavakos has a very decisive view of the Beethoven Concerto: “The emotions in Beethoven’s music are extremely rich and personal. They reveal a big heart that is filled with the courage to challenge the world. We encounter a man capable of being not only polite but also very coarse. His world is typified by inner conflicts and powerful confrontations. In my own view it is impossible to approach Beethoven by means of stylized emotions – ‘pure’, controlled and, as it were, disembodied intonation is not enough. Beethoven leaves the eighteenth-century perspective far behind him and looks resolutely ahead.”
As a result Kavakos does not take his cue primarily from historically informed performance practices, even if there are many ways in which he finds such ideas stimulating. Instead, he is seeking his own way forward between a traditional “Romantic” reading of the work and one that is historically informed. It is only logical, therefore, that in the present interpretation he combines his violinistic aims with his passion for conducting and takes complete charge of the performance and of the way in which it is shaped. The present recording, in which he not only plays the violin but also conducts the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, stems from his residency with the orchestra, during which time he gave a series of performances in Munich’s Gasteig Concert Hall. The concertmaster throughout this series of concerts was Anton Barakhowsky.
The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra is not just one of the world’s elite orchestras, its players are also remarkable for their particularly sensitive performance style and for the sort of watchful alertness normally associated with chamber music. Kavakos, who has known his colleagues for many years, decided to use a relatively large body of strings for his recording, offering a broad range of possibilities in terms of both dynamics and tone colours. In addition to powerful forte outbursts, this choice also makes it easier to create a smooth patina and to produce subtly graduated shades of piano.
Kavakos’s spectacular cadenzas are based on the ones that Beethoven himself is believed to have written down in 1809 in his own copy of the piano version of the concerto that he prepared in 1807.
Kavakos’s residency with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in 2018/19 included not only several appearances as a soloist but also a number of chamber recitals with select members of the orchestra. He has been a passionate chamber musician since his youth and has explored the whole of the chamber repertory in myriad formations with prominent partners at numerous festivals. “I’ve always loved the Septet. This is music that is full of humour and that conveys a feeling of joy rather than one of drama. It was incredible fun to rehearse this work with my wonderful colleagues from the orchestra.”
In choosing a selection of movements from the late National Airs with Variations, finally, Kavakos slips into the role of the modest accompanist working alongside his piano partner of many years’ standing, the Italian pianist Enrico Pace, who, like Kavakos himself, was born in 1967. Both men have made many recordings together, including all of Beethoven’s violin sonatas, which they will be performing together as part of a tour marking the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth. By adopting four different roles in the present release – conductor, soloist, first among equals and accompanist –, Leonidas Kavakos illustrates Beethoven’s astonishing universality.
