Born in 1982, Ilya Gringolts studied the violin with Tatyana Liberova and composition with Zhana Metallidi at the St Petersburg Conservatoire. In 1994, he won the first prize at the International Youth Competition in St. Petersburg, then the first prize at the Folkestone Competition in England and in 1998 he was awarded first prize at the Niccolo Paganini Competition.
He made his debut as a soloist in 1993 with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Yuri Temirkanov and his recital debut in France at the Auditorium du Louvre in 1999. He has given numerous concerts throughout the world with the symphonic orchestras of Moscow, Washington, Liverpool, Tapiola, Lakhti, the Hannover NDR, Halle, Liverpool, Birmingham, Israel Philharmonic and Mahler Chamber Orchestra.
Ilya Gringolts is regularly invited by the festivals of Lucerne, Kuhmo, Risor, Zermatt, Verbier, BBC Proms, Monte Carlo’s Printemps des Arts and Bucarest. His soloist and recital repertoires cover Bach to Schnittke and Hindemith and in particularly baroque music, which he performs with the harpsichordist Masaaki Suzuki. He regularly plays chamber music with Yuri Bashmet, Lynn Harrell, Diemut Poppen, Vladimir Mendelssohn and Itamar Golan. He has founded his own quartet named the Gringolts String Quartet.
He has recorded works by Paganini, Ysaye, Schnittke, Ernst and his own compositions for the record company Bis. For Deutsche Grammophon he has recorded Sibelius’ violin concerto and Humoresques, Prokofiev’s first violin concerto conducted by Neeme Järvi and J.S. Bach’s sonatas and partitas. For Onyx he has recorded the Schumann sonatas with the pianist Peter Laul and the Arenski and Taneiev violin concertos. Ilya Gringolts plays the Stradivarius violin ex-Kiesewetter made in Cremona in 1723 and lent by the Stradivarius Society of Chicago.
