Boris Kuschnir (violin)

Boris Kuschnir was born into a music 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 a mem­ber until 1979.

Since 1981 he has been liv­ing in Austria. He became an Aus­trian cit­izen in 1982 and was the first con­cert­mas­ter of the Bruck­ner Orches­tra in Linz until 1983. In 1984, he became a Pro­fessor at the Kon­ser­vat­orium Wien Uni­ver­sity and also a dis­tin­guished Pro­fessor at the Uni­ver­sity of Music in Graz in 1999.

His repu­ta­tion as a teacher won inter­na­tional recog­ni­tion with the recent out­stand­ing suc­cess of his pupils, Julian Rach­lin (1st Prize Euro­vi­sion Grand Prix for Young Musi­cians, Ams­ter­dam 1988), Nikolaj Znaider (1st Prize of the Queen Elisa­beth Com­pet­i­tion, Brus­sels 1997), Lidia Baich (1st Prize Euro­vi­sion Grand Prix for Young Musi­cians, Vienna 1998), Dalibor Kar­vay (1st Prize Euro­vi­sion Grand Prix for Young Musi­cians, Ber­lin 2002; 1. Prize Inter­na­tional Tibor Varga Com­pet­i­tion, Switzer­land 2003; 1st Prize David Ois­trakh Com­pet­i­tion, Moscow 2008),Alex­an­dra Soumm (1st Prize Euro­vi­sion Grand Prix for Young Musi­cians, Lucerne 2004), Lorenzo Gatto (2nd Prize Queen Eliza­beth Com­pet­i­tion, Brus­sels 2009), Pavel Mily­ukov (1st Prize Aram Khachaturian Inter­na­tional Com­pet­i­tion, 2012, 2nd Prize Seoul Inter­na­tional Music Com­pet­i­tion, 2012), Eugene Chep­ovet­sky (2nd Prize David Ois­trakh Inter­na­tional Com­pet­i­tion, Moscow 2008 and 3rdPrize Louis Spohr Com­pet­i­tion, Wei­mar 2013), Yuuki Wong (2nd Prize Michael Hill Inter­na­tional Violin Com­pet­i­tion, New Zea­l­and 2007), Julia Turnovsky (3rdPrize David Ois­trakh Inter­na­tional Com­pet­i­tion, Moscow 2008) and Aleksey Igudes­man (Igudes­man & Joo).

In 1984 Boris Kuschnir foun­ded the Wiener Schubert Trio which received many pres­ti­gi­ous awards, among them the 1. Prize at the inter­na­tional Cham­ber Music Com­pet­i­tion Ser­gio Lorenzi in Trieste, Italy with Sandor Vegh as pres­id­ent of the jury, the Moz­art Inter­pret­a­tion­spreis 1988 in Vienna and the Prize of the Ernst von Siemens Found­a­tion 1990. 

In 1993 he foun­ded the Vienna Brahms Trio which made their highly acclaimed debut at the Gidon Kremer’s Lock­en­haus Fest­ival in Aus­tria. In 1996, the Trio won First Prize at the 9th Inter­na­tional Cham­ber Music Com­pet­i­tion in Illzach, France. He was co-founder of the Kopel­man Quar­tet in 2002 with which he is giv­ing con­certs all over the world since and has released CDs at Nim­bus Records and Wig­more Hall Live.