"My challenge?
To connect the ear
and the mind and to teach people to consciously search for beauty."
Shlomo Mintz is considered by colleagues, audiences and
critics one of the foremost violinists of our time, esteemed for his
impeccable musicianship, stylistic versatility and commanding technique.
Born in Moscow in
1959,
his family immigrated to
Israel, when
he was two. There, he studied with
Ilona Feher
who introduced him to
Isaac Stern,
who became his mentor.
His first performance on stage was at
age
6 and at
age 11, he played
as
soloist with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.
Soon afterward, he was called on a week's notice by
Zubin Mehta to play
Paganini's
Violin Concerto No. 1, Op. 6, with the orchestra when
Itzhak Perlman fell ill. He made his
Carnegie Hall debut at the age of
sixteen with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra
(conducted by William Steinberg).
Under the auspices of Isaac Stern and the American-Israel Cultural
Foundation he started studying at the
Juilliard
School of Music in New York and at the age of
18, he made an extensive
tour through Europe and signed, still
in his early twenties, a long-term recording contract with
Deutsche Grammophon.
Along his career, he has collaborated with famous artists like
I
saac Stern, Mstislav Rostropovich, Pinchas Zukerman, Itzhak Perlman,
Zubin Mehta, Claudio Abbado, Carlo Maria Giulini, Antal Dorati, Erich
Leinsdorf, Eugene Ormandy, Riccardo Muti, Yuri Temirkanov, Ida Haendel
and Ivry Gitlis, among many others.
At the age of eighteen, Mintz launched a
parallel career as a conductor, and
has since led acclaimed orchestras worldwide including the
Royal Philharmonic
(United Kingdom), the
NHK Symphony (Japan) and the
Israel
Philharmonic, as well as the
Concertgebouw of Amsterdam,
La
Scala di Milano,
London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic
Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Stuttgart Radio Orchestra, La Fenice,
Detroit Symphony and
Teatro Colón Buenos Aires..
He was
music advisor of
the I
srael Chamber Orchestra from 1989 to 1993, and in March
1994 was appointed artistic advisor and
principal
guest conductor of the
Maastricht Symphony in the Netherlands,
which he led sometimes as both conductor and violin soloist. In 2008,
he became
principal guest conductor of
the
Zagreb Philharmonic. From 2002 to 2012, he was
artistic director of the
Sion-Valais
International Music Festival.
He was one of the
founders of the
Keshet Eilon International Violin Mastercourse in
Israel, an advanced-level summer program for young talented
violinists from all around the world in and served as a patron there for
eighteen years (
1992-2010).
He is one of the main actors/co-founder of the
"Violins of Hope" project: forty-five
violins whose owners lost their lives in ghettos and concentration camps
during World War II, restored and displayed internationally. The Violins
of Hope were presented in a special event in Jerusalem for the sixtieth-anniversary
celebration of the State of Israel.
Regularly invited by the most prestigious international competitions,
Mintz has served as a
jury member
of the
Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow (1993) and the
Queen
Elisabeth International Music Competition in Brussels (1993 and
2001). He was also invited to be
jury president
of the
International Henryk Wieniawski Competition (October 2001)
for the Violin in Poznań, Poland. From 2002 to 2011, he was jury president
of the Sion Valais-International Violin Competition in Switzerland and
from 2012 to 2018, the
Artistic Director
of
Crans-Montana Classics, a high-level violin Mastercourse and
Festival, also in Switzerland.
Currently, he is the Mentor and
President
of the Jury of the
International Violin Competition Buenos
Aires in Argentina,
President of Jury and Artistic
Director of
Tucuman (Argentina) Festival and National Violin
Competition, as well as the
president of
the
Munetsugu Angel Violin Competition in Japan and the
Ilona
Fehér Budapest Violin Competition in Hungary.
In
2019, To celebrate Shlomo Mintz’s
60th Birthday, Deutsche Grammophon have
re-released his recordings
as a
13 CD Edition. These include the
l
egendary recordings of the
Mendelssohn,
Prokofiev, Sibelius, Lalo and Vieuxtemps violin concertos with great
orchestras and conductors such as Claudio Abbado and Zubin Mehta.
Likewise, Shlomo Mintz started in
2018
a series of
new recordings including
the piano sonatas by
Ysaye and - together
with Italian pianist and Mendelssohn specialist
Roberto Prosseda
- the
sonatas and the
concert for violin and piano by
Mendelssohn. The resulting albums are
released
by
Universal/Decca in 2019.
In recent times Mintz has added
composing
to his talents as violinist, violist and conductor, with compositions
for
orchestra and chamber ensembles. His “Anthem To An Unkown
Nation” was premiered in
June 2017 at the Vigadó Grand
Hall, Budapest and his Sonatina for violin and piano, premiered in Domodossola
and Istanbul on
October 2017.