Biography

Andrei Gridchuk has held the Principal Viola chair of the Deutsche Oper Berlin since 1994 — three decades inside one of Europe’s great opera orchestras, alongside a parallel life as soloist and chamber musician. He plays a viola made by Paolo Antonio Testore in Milan in 1750.

The school

Born in Irkutsk, he began on the violin at four and made his debut with the city’s philharmonic orchestra at six. At seven he entered the Central Music School of the Moscow Conservatory, continuing at the Conservatory itself; his teachers included Yuri Yankelevich, Boris Belenky and Fyodor Druzhinin. The decisive encounter was Yuri Bashmet: Gridchuk became his assistant and, as a member of the Moscow Soloists, part of the ensemble with which the modern Russian viola school toured the world.

The prizes

Two competitions marked the passage from student to soloist: the All-Union Viola Competition in 1984, and in 1989 the Maurice Vieux International Viola Competition in Orléans — the contest named for the great French violist — where he took the top prize.

The soloist

Concerto engagements have brought him to the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the Symphoniker Hamburg, the Moscow Philharmonic, the Staatskapelle Weimar, the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi and the Zagreb Philharmonic, under conductors including Riccardo Chailly, Kent Nagano, Christian Thielemann, Marek Janowski and Krzysztof Penderecki.

The chamber musician

His chamber partners map the string world of his generation: Yuri Bashmet, Boris Berezovsky, Steven Isserlis, Mischa Maisky, Vadim Repin, Dmitry Sitkovetsky and the Borodin Quartet, at festivals from Verbier to Tours. At the KapanFest academy in Armenia and the Varna Summer festival, teaching stands beside performing.

The repertoire

Two lines of repertoire work stand out. He made the premiere recordings of Nikolai Roslavets’s viola sonatas (Le Chant du Monde), returning a suppressed Russian modernist to the instrument’s repertoire; his recordings of the Bruch and Reinecke trios appeared on Pavane. And with Dmitry Sitkovetsky and David Geringas he performs Bach’s Goldberg Variations in Sitkovetsky’s string-trio arrangement — reviewed in The Strad in 2022.

For engagements: t.goz@gridchuk.com