Shlomo Mintz
Vice chairman of the jury
Shlomo Mintz considered by colleagues, audiences, and critics one of the foremost violinists of our time, esteemed for his impeccable musicianship, stylistic versatility, and commanding technique. He has long been acclaimed as a celebrated guest artist with many of the great orchestras and conductors on the international stage and continues to enchant audiences with his playing.
Awarded with many prestigious international prizes including the Premio Internazionale Accademia Musicale Chigiana, the Diapason D’Or, the Grand Prix du Disque, the Gramophone Award, the Edison Award and the Cremona Music Award, in 2006 he received an Honorary Degree from the Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba (Israel) and in 2022 was named Honorary Fellow of the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance (Israel).
Born in Moscow and immigrated when he was 2 to Israel, he studied with Ilona Feher who introduced Mintz to Isaac Stern becoming this his mentor. He was also a student of Dorothy DeLay in New York.
On stage from an early age and along his career, he has collaborated with such a famous artists like Isaac Stern, Mstislav Rostropovich, Zukerman, Itzhak Perlman, Zubin Mehta, Claudio Abbado, Carlo Maria Giulini, Riccardo Muti, Yuri Temirkanov, Ida Haendel and Ivry Gitlis, among many others, and played with the best orchestras in the world as the Berlin, Wien, Concertgebouw, Chicago, Los Angeles, the NHK Symphony (Japan), Philadelphia and New York Philharmonic.
At 18 years old, Mintz launched a parallel career as a conductor, and has since led acclaimed orchestras worldwide including the Royal Philharmonic (United Kingdom), the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Orchestre National de France, the Filarmonica della Scala, the Melbourne Symphony and the Russian National Orchestras, Filarmonica di Bologna, the Israel Philharmonic and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.
Being one of the founders of the Keshet Eilon International Violin Mastercourse in Israel, an advanced-level program for young talented violinists from all around the world, he has served as a patron there for eighteen years (1992- 2010), and is one of the main actors/co-founder of the Violins of Hope project. The Violins of Hope is presented in special events worldwide.
To celebrate Mintz’s 60th birthday, Deutsche Grammophon re-released his recordings as a 13-CD edition that includes the legendary recordings of the Mendelssohn, Prokofiev, Sibelius, Lalo, and Vieuxtemps violin concertos with great orchestras and conductors. With the label DECCA, he recently released the Ysaÿe Six Violin Sonatas Op. 27 and SHLOMO MINTZ violín and another CD with the Mendelssohn Concertos. In the last years, Mintz added composing to his talents as violinist, violist, and conductor: his Anthem to an Unknown Nation was premiered in June 2017 at the Vigadó Grand Hall, Budapest, and his Sonatina for violin and piano “Quatre Hommages” premiered in Domodossola and Istanbul in October 2017.
Regularly invited by the most prestigious international competitions, Mintz has served as a jury member of the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, the Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition in Brussels and the International Henryk Wieniawski Competition in Poznań, Poland. He was also invited to be the jury president of the Schoenfeld International String Competition and of the Munetsugu Angel Violin Competition in Japan for several years. From 2002 to 2011, he was jury president of the Sion Valais-International Violin Competition and from 2012 to 2018, the Artistic Director of the Crans-Montana Classics Festival and Mastercourse, both in Switzerland.
Mentor and President of the Jury of the International Violin Competition Buenos Aires in Argentina, he is also the president of the Ilona Fehér Budapest Violin Competition in Hungary.
He regularly conducts masterclasses world-wide and collaborate with prestigious institutions. He also teaches through his online Academy, Shlomo Mintz Academy that was created during the coronavirus pandemic to keep young violinists connected.
He is steadily receiving invitations to conduct and play with orchestras and festivals worldwide, and next season he has been invited to perform in Italy, Romania, Germany, US, Japan, Hungary, Korea, Vietnam, China, Argentina, among other countries.