Yuri Torchinsky

Photo of Yuri Torchinsky

Professor of Violin

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Tutor in Violin

Yuri Torchinsky is a Tutor in Violin at the RNCM and Leader of the BBC Philharmonic. At the age of 24, while still a student, he became the youngest ever concertmaster of the Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra in Moscow and has since toured the world with the company, both as leader and soloist.

Born in Kharkov (now in Ukraine) in 1955, he began to play the violin at the age of six, and was invited to attend the Moscow Violin School shortly afterwards. He graduated to the Moscow State Conservatory where he studied under Maya Glezarova and was appointed Professor of Violin in 1991.

Yuri Torchinsky was successful in several major violin competitions, notably in the 1981 Humla International Violin Competition in Zagreb, where he was awarded First Prize and the Special Prize from the Zagreb TV and Radio Orchestra for the best performance of Brahms’s Violin Concerto. Two years later he won Second Prize in the 1983 Tokyo International Violin Competition.

He appears in England and Europe as a soloist and recitalist and has worked with conductors including Vladimir Ashkenazy, Yevgeny Svetlanov, Georg Solti, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Mstislav Rostropovich and Rafel Frühbeck de Burgos. He has guest-led many orchestras, including the London Philharmonic, London Symphony, Royal Philharmonic, Philharmonia, and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House.

Yuri joined the BBC Philharmonic as Leader in 1996. He makes regular appearances as soloist with the orchestra, most recently with Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in York and Durham. He has made over 100 recordings with Chandos Records as leader of the orchestra, and as soloist in the Romance from Shostakovich’s suite from The Gadfly and Mendelssohn’s Double Concerto. He also gives many chamber recitals with his wife, the pianist Dina Parkahina. Together they have performed the three Brahms Violin Sonatas in a recital at the RNCM and have given several recitals for the Manchester Midday Lunchtime series at The Bridgewater Hall.

In January 2006 Yuri performed at the Shostakovich: His Heroes and Comrades festival with the BBC Philharmonic and as a chamber musician at the RNCM’s Comrades Festival.