Jury of 5th International Karol Lipiński Violin Competition

Ilya Kaler is one of the most outstanding personalities of the violin today, with a career ranging from that of soloist and recording artist to chamber musician and professor. He is the only violinist in the world to win the Gold Medal at three of the world’s most prestigious international violin competitions: the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow (1986), the Sibelius Competition in Helsinki (1985), and the Paganini Competition in Genoa (1981). Praised by Gramophone magazine as “the magician, bewitching our ears,” Kaler has earned rave reviews for his solo appearances with distinguished orchestras such as the Leningrad, Moscow, and Dresden Philharmonic Orchestras, the Montreal Symphony, the Danish and Berlin Radio Orchestras, the Moscow and Zurich Chamber Orchestras, and most major American orchestras. He has collaborated with a number of outstanding conductors, including Valery Gergiev, Dmitri Kitayenko, Mariss Jansons, and Jerzy Semkow. Kaler’s solo recitals have also taken him to five continents, where he received enthusiastic reviews. Kaler performs across the globe as a member of The Tempest Trio with cellist Amit Peled and pianist Alon Goldstein, a constellation of internationally acclaimed soloists. The trio recently released their debut album for Naxos Records, featuring the complete set of piano trios by Antonin Dvorák. His musical versatility extends to the symphony orchestra, as well, and he has appeared as guest Concertmaster with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the San Francisco, Pittsburgh, and Baltimore Symphonies, and on tour with the World Orchestra for Peace under Valery Gergiev.

Konstanty Andrzej Kulka studied violin at the State High School of Music in Gdańsk under the direction of Stefan Herman (graduated with honours in 1971). At the age of seventeen, he received a distinction at the Niccolò Paganini International Violin Competition in Genoa, but it was the ARD International Radio Competition in Munich in 1964 where he won the first prize that ushered him into his international career. Since 1966, the artist has been giving concerts around the world (in all European countries, the United States, North and South America, Japan and Australia) and has played over 1,500 recitals and symphonic concerts. He performed as a guest soloist with a great number of renowned orchestras, including Berliner Philharmoniker, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, English Chamber Orchestra, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra and the Leningrad Philharmonic. He has participated in prestigious music festivals, including Lucerne, Bordeaux, Flanders, Berlin, Prague, Barcelona, Brighton and Warsaw. A special place among the violinist’s artistic tours has been reserved for performances with the Symphony Orchestra of Poland’s National Philharmonic. Since 1968 he has performed in a duet with Jerzy Marchwiński.

Bor­is Kuschnir was born into a musical fam­ily in Kiev in 1948. He stud­ied viol­in with Bor­is Belen­ky at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Con­ser­vatoire and cham­ber music with Valentin Ber­l­in­sky of the Borod­in Quar­tet. His many encoun­ters with Dmitri Shos­takovich (work­ing on his last quar­tets) and Dav­id Ois­trakh, with whom he also stud­ied, had a last­ing influ­ence on his artist­ic devel­op­ment. His career star­ted 1969 when he was one of the three win­ners of the Allunions-Com­pet­i­tion in Len­in­grad where, in the final, he per­formed the Beeth­oven Viol­in Con­certo with the Len­in­grad Sym­phony Orches­tra under the bat­on of Yuri Temirkan­ov. He has won numer­ous prizes at inter­na­tion­al viol­in and cham­ber music competitions (Par­is, Bel­grade, Sion, Trapani, Brat­is­lava, Florence, Trieste, Gorizia, Ham­burg, Ver­celli). In 1970 he foun­ded the Moscow String Quar­tet and remained its mem­ber until 1979.

An internationally renowned Russian-Israeli violinist and pedagogue, was awarded a Master’s Degree by the Samuel Rubin Israeli Academy of Music, Tel Aviv, where he studied with Professor Yair Kless. He has appeared worldwide as a soloist and chamber music player at prestigious concert venues, including Carnegie Hall and the Grand Hall of Moscow Conservatory. As a Professor of Violin at the Royal College of Music, London, he has become one of the leading and most sought-after teachers in the UK. His students, who come from all over the world to study with him, have been winners of many national and international competitions. He has given masterclasses in many countries around the world at well-known music institutions, including the Juilliard School, the Shanghai Conservatory, Haute École de Musique de Lausanne (Switzerland) and the Singapore and Moscow Conservatories. He has also served as a jury member of numerous major international competitions, notably Henryk Wieniawski (Poland), Sion Valais (Switzerland), Joseph Joachim (Germany), Lipizer (Italy) and Yampolsky (Russia).

Jakub Jakowicz learned to play the violin from his father, Krzysztof Jakowicz, also as a student at the Fryderyk Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw. He is also the last student of one of the founders of the Polish violin school, Professor Tadeusz Wroński. He gave his first public concert at the age of eleven. In 1998, at the invitation of Krzysztof Penderecki, he performed at the composer’s festival in Kraków. In 2001, he debuted with the Munich Philharmonic under the direction of Pinchas Steinberg. Since then, he has performed as a soloist with many renowned orchestras, including the National Philharmonic Orchestra in Warsaw, Orchestra del Maggio Musicale in Florence, the Czech Philharmonic in Prague, Orchestra di Santa Cecilia in Rome, the Dresden Philharmonic, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande in Geneva, Orquesta Nacional in Madrid, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo and the Concerto Köln. He has collaborated with such conductors as Pinchas Steinberg, Jerzy Semkow, Antoni Wit, Jerzy Maksymiuk, Jacek Kaspszyk, Kazimierz Kord, Jan Krenz, Yan Pascal Tortelier, Eiji Oue, Marek Pijarowski, Krzysztof Penderecki, Agnieszka Duczmal, Kirill Karabits, Michail Jurowski, Marc Minkowski and Stefan Solyom.

MARIUSZ SMOLIJ is considered one of the most exciting conductors of his generation. Frequent recording artists for NAXOS International, he has been consistently gaining international critical acclaim including praises by the New York Times for “compelling performances”. Maestro Smolij led over 130 orchestras in 28 countries on five continents appearing in some of the most prestigious concert halls of the world, including the Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in New York, Kimmel Center in Philadelphia, Zürich Tonhalle, Salle Gaveau in Paris, Concertgebauw in Amsterdam, and National Art Center in Beijing, China. In North America among many others, he conducted the Houston Symphony, New Jersey Symphony, Orchestra of the Chicago Lyric Opera, St. Louis Philharmonic, Rochester Philharmonic, Indianapolis Symphony, Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, New Orleans Philharmonic, Hartford Symphony and Symphony Nova Scotia. Internationally, he enjoys notable reputation appearing with important orchestras of Germany, Italy, France, Switzerland, Holland, Portugal, Spain, Israel, South Africa, Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovak Republic and Poland.