“Kavakos played like a dream eliciting an almost physical pleasure from the trueness of his intonation and the way in which certain phrases, certain chords landed.”
Deutsches Sinfonie-Orchester Berlin / Ingo Metzmacher, BBC Proms, The Independent, August 2010
Leonidas Kavakos has established himself as a violinist and artist of rare quality, known at the highest level for his virtuosity, superb musicianship and the integrity of his playing. International recognition came whilst Kavakos was still in his teens. He won the Sibelius competition in 1985 and then the Paganini competition in 1988 and following these successes, he was invited by orchestras across Europe, North America and the Far East and his reputation soared.
Kavakos is now one of the world’s most highly regarded and sought after violinists and has established close relationships with many of the greatest orchestras and conductors. He also regularly visits the major international festivals with visiting orchestras, in chamber music and in recital.
In the current seasons, Kavakos appears as soloist with the Academia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Dresden Staatskapelle, Houston Symphony Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, La Scala Filharmonica, London Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and Tonhalle Orchestra and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. He works with such conductors as Pierre Boulez, Ricardo Chailly, Myung-Whun Chung, Gustavo Dudamel, Christoph Eschenbach, Iván Fischer, Alan Gilbert, Valery Gergiev, Bernard Haitink, Daniel Harding, Paavo Jarvi, Zubin Mehta, Anthony Pappano, Christian Thielemann and Osmo Vänskä.
Leonidas Kavakos is also increasingly recognised as a conductor of considerable gift and musicianship. From October 2007 until September 2009, Kavakos was Artistic Director of the Camerata Salzburg, having been the orchestra’s Principal Guest Artist from 2002. He has also conducted the La Scala Filharmonica and St Louis SO and will be appearing as conductor or conductor/violinist with the Academia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Budapest FO, Houston SO, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Rotterdam, PO and the Maggio Musicale.
Kavakos’ many distinguished chamber music partners include Gautier and Renaud Capuçon, Natalia Gutman, Emanuel Ax, Helene Grimaud, Nicholas Angelich, Nickolai Luganzki, Elisabeth Leonskaya and Enrico Pace. He is invited widely as an artist in residence and will have a wide exposure as such in the next seasons, in November 2009 as Artist in Focus at London’s Southbank Centre, Wigmore Hall, with the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the Rotterdam Philharmonic and the Tonhalle, Zurich. He is a regular and favoured artist at the Verbier Festival.
Kavakos has a distinguished catalogue of recordings. Together with the Camerata Salzburg, he has recorded live on Sony Mozart’s five violin concerti and the E flat major symphony and, more recently, Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto coupled with the Mendelssohn piano trios with Enrico Pace and Patrick Demenga. This recording was recently named ECHO Klassik Best Concerto Recording of 19th Century Work.
In 1991, he won the Gramophone Award for the first recording ever of the original version of Sibelius’ Violin Concerto (1903/04) on BIS. On ECM, he has released a recording of sonatas by Enescu and Ravel together with pianist Péter Nagy and a recording of works by Bach and Stravinsky: "...the exquisite tenderness of the playing gives the music a sense of timeless, poignant beauty…” (Gramophone, May 2005).
Leonidas Kavakos plays the 'Falmouth' Stradivarius of 1692 and a Giovanni Battista Guadagnini of 1782 (Torino).
Leonidas Kavakos is represented by Jessica Ford at Intermusica, jford@intermusica.co.uk.
February 2010 / 573 words. Not to be altered without permission. Please destroy all previous biographical material.
Prom 44: Budapest Festival Orchestra/ Fischer, Royal Albert Hall, London
“Primary colours were again muted in the beautiful performance of Bartok’s Second Violin Concerto which followed. It was as if the soloist, Leonidas Kavakos, and conductor, Ivan Fischer, were at all times mindful that one of Bartok’s favourite composers was Strauss. Romantic reverie was the key here in a reading which felt forever poised on the edge of dreams. Kavakos took his cue from the strumming harp, lyre-like at the start, lending the rapt opening theme an air of ancient fable. Feverish dances jolted us back to reality with smouldering trills and fiery arpeggios reminding us exactly where we were – deep in the Hungarian heartlands. But it was Kavakos’s miracles of fine shading that one took away from this performance, his stratospheric song blissfully duetting with celeste at the close of the slow movement like a fading memory”.
The Independent, August 2009
Camerata Salzburg, Enrico Pace & Patrick Demenga / Mendelssohn Violin Concerto & piano trios (Sony Classical)
"The quality fibre of this serious artist is immediately on show in his violin’s opening statement, with its finely spun tone and scrupulously enunciated rhythms. He keeps his interpretation fresh and personal as Mendelssohn leads him from turbulent passion through liquid song to the finale’s delicate sparkle. The orchestra is a good partner, too.
Deluged with performances in this centenary year, I was beginning to think I never wanted to hear the work again. Kavakos’s interpretation showed me I was wrong."
The Times, July 2009
"There are over 60 recordings of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in the catalogue, but this version from Greek virtuoso Leonidas Kavakos certainly stands out among them. This is not the drooping, chastely melancholy concerto portrayed by some players like Viktoria Mullova, this is a virile, full-blooded piece. The fleet-footed dance of the finale has fire as well as grace, and the slow movement has numerous tiny inflections of tempo and phrasing which imbue the melody with urgent feeling.
Kavakos also directs his own Camerata Salzburg orchestra, which is alert to his every twist and turn. The concerto is coupled with Mendelssohn’s trios for piano, violin and cello, and if anything these are even more impressive. Pianist Enrico Pace is fabulously fleet-fingered in the scherzos, but again a deeper, weightier Mendelssohn is revealed, beyond salon grace and elfin lightness. The players even managed to make the saccharine slow movement of the First Trio seem genuinely moving."
The Telegraph, August 2009
“As a violinist whose dazzling virtuosity is rooted in the deepest musicianship, Leonidas Kavakos has few equals when it comes to the concertos of the early 20th century”
Sunday Telegraph, August 2009
“...as both soloist and conductor, Kavakos clearly generates a real rapport with the players. His account of one of the most hackneyed works in the violinist's repertoire achieves the near impossible of sounding fresh and original - there's an urgency and nervous energy about Kavakos's playing that's vividly communicated to the orchestra.”
The Guardian, August 2009
“Leonidas Kavakos plays the opening movement of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto with restraint and intelligent musicality, cultivating purity of line and a wide expressive range… He is sentimental but never cloying in the Andante, playing its conclusion with striking freedom, and he skirts the danger with thrilling abandon in the finale.
Kavakos interacts commendably with the orchestra and seems to have pwer in reserve…
Remaining loyal to Mendelssohn for his couplings, Kavakos shows that he is equally at home in the chamber sphere. His partnership with pianist Enrico Pace and cellist Patrick Demenga spawns expressive, technically accomplished and passionately committed readings of the composer’s two piano trios. These players capture the mood contrasts of the outer movements, the lyricism of the andantes and the lightness of the scherzos with skill and artistry. The recording is exemplary.”
The Strad, June 2009
In recital with Enrico Pace / Beethoven, Shostakovich, Strauss
“The performance [of Beethoven’s Sonata Op. 12, No. 3] was as buoyant and deftly inflected as a suave, witty conversation … The silken sweetness of Kavakos' 1692 Stradivarius was beyond beautiful. And, as was the norm until the 20th century, Kavakos used vibrato – a relatively close, subtle vibrato – only on long notes … it was a genuine expressive device.
The Shostakovich Violin Sonata that followed sounded very different: finely focused, its intensity closely managed, explosive when called for. Kavakos and Pace made the most of the first movement's spectral, spidery explorations. The central Allegretto was a gruff, earthy dance, with a rising pitch of desperation. Violin and piano had a solo variation apiece in the finale's unsettling passacaglia.
After intermission came the Strauss … It's hard to imagine a performance more lovingly realizing both the grand pronouncements and the sweet nothings. The slow movement is called "Improvisation," and so it seemed in a deliciously stretched and caressed account. In the violin's very first phrase, a mere three-note pickup motif could take the breath away.”
The Dallas Morning News, March 2009
New York Philharmonic with David Robertson / Bartok Concerto No.2
“Kavakos conveyed the rhapsodic flights, endless variety and subtle blend of folkloric tunes with modernistic wildness … He dispatched the virtuosic challenges with a cool command and paradoxically enhanced the bravura excitement … this performance roused the audience to a long ovation.”
New York Times, October 2008
Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra with Vasily Petrenko / Beethoven Concerto
“The Largehetto was breathtaking, everything seemed to be perfect; sound, timing and expression”
NCR Handelsblad, October 2008
London Symphony Orchestra with Valery Gergiev / Prokofiev Concerto No.1
“Kavakos wove a silver thread of sound around the woodwind voices, the very stuff of fairy tales. There were malevolent contrasts, too, with beasts for every beauty, and Kavakos unlocked those with a fantastic range of gruesome colours and wicked articulation. With the closing trills, fairy dust settled over us.”
The Independent, October 2008
Recital tour with Elisabeth Leonskaja / Brahms Violin Sonatas Nos 1, 2 & 3
“Truly great art does not consist of caprioles and exhibitionist displays. It is being able to say a simple sentence, like “You are loved”, such that it is fully comprehensible – and believable. Doyenne Elisabeth Leonskaja and dynamic violinist Leonidas Kavakos achieved this with Brahms’ three violin sonatas. The first chords filled the listener with a deep sense of trust; showing the bitter-sweetness of Brahms the great comforter.
They channelled the fervent urgency of the piece into a highly focussed inner glow: there was no whining or sobbing in Kavakos’ warm tone, carried along as if by a heart-beat. … Every cadence was a gentle, unquestioning and unspeaking embrace; a home-coming. …
The lid only came off the pressure cooker in the D minor sonata – and this outpouring of energy broke the magical trance in the Herkulessaal and released the powerful applause.”
TZ München, 9 October 2008
“ …The distinguished tone of the Falmouth Stradivarius (1629) was captivating, and Kavakos coaxed a simply magnificent sound from it. … Here were two artists at work, whose understanding of the value of their own line and that of their partner’s was the basis for such an intelligently measured dialogue. The cantabile in many passages of the first movement was surpassed in the adagio, where the double-stopping on the violin was enchanting. …
The songful Sonata Op.100 was characterised by the tension between inner lyricism and passionate outbreaks. The expressive force was inherent in their use of forte, which never allowed the balance between the musicians to be lost, and seemed to be reined in at times. The melody in the andante was portrayed as a celebration, threatened by an aggressive vivace. Two masters were at work here, who knew how to draw on every nuance available.
Brahms employed a very concentrated language in Sonata Op.108; an absolute pinnacle of his art. This performance awoke the listener’s every sense in the adagio, keeping him hanging on every note until the “outrageous” conclusion. The third movement steered a course between ease and emotion towards the finale, which was filled with breath-taking contrasts. Depth of expression and intensity of passion stood hand in hand.”
Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten, October 2008