Gidon Kremer

The Latvian concert violinist Gidon Kremer is the grandson of the well known musicologist and violinist Karl Brückner. His father was of Jewish origin and also a professional violinist who survived the holocaust, after which his wife gave birth to their son in 1947. Kremer began playing violin at the age of four, mentored by his father and grandfather, and then went on to study at the Riga School of Music before going on to attend the Moscow Conservatory under the guidance of the famed Soviet violinist David Oistrakh.

At the age of 22, after winning the prestigious Paganini Competition in 1969, Kremer won the coveted International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1970. Subsequently Kremer enjoyed a meteoric rise to fame on the international classical music scene, playing for the Berlin Philharmonie and then making appearances across Europe, the States and Japan.

In 1980 he left the Soviet Union and settled in Germany founding a chamber music festival in Austria where he held the position of artistic director for 30 years before retiring from the post in 2011. Kremer had founded the Kremerata Baltica in 1997, a chamber orchestra created to help promote the careers of young players from the Baltic region. He has been a prolific recording artist for Deutsche Grammophon, a career which began in in 1978, and has been the recipient of numerous awards and accolades within the field of classical music.