Hrachya Avanesyan

Described as a “sensitive and highly accomplished musician with expressive nuance” (Gramophone Magazine) and a “soloist with passionate power, sentiment, and sweet tone” (Frankfurter Allgemeine), Hrachya Avanesyan is a violinist of international acclaim. He is the 1st prize winner of both the Yehudi Menuhin and Carl Nielsen Competitions.

Avanesyan has performed with leading orchestras, including the Copenhagen Philharmonic, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, Belgian National Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Orchestre de Chambre de Pelléas, Gulbenkian Orchestra, National Orchestra of Lille, Sinfonia Varsovia, Warsaw Philharmonic, Aarhus Symphony, Liège Philharmonic, Belgrade Philharmonic, Arthur Rubinstein Philharmonic, Staatsorchester Rheinische Philharmonie, Brussels Philharmonic, Royal Flemish Philharmonic, Tokyo Symphony, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra. He has collaborated with renowned conductors such as Eliahu Inbal, Marc Soustrot, Walter Weller, Lan Shui, Christopher Warren-Green, Joji Hattori, Paul Goodwin, Paul Watkins, Joana Carneiro, Alexander Vedernikov, Joshua Weilerstein, Patrick Davin, and Daniel Raiskin.

Avanesyan has graced the stages of some of the world’s most prestigious concert halls, including the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Wigmore Hall (London), Salle Gaveau and Théâtre des Champs-Élysées (Paris), Suntory Hall (Tokyo), Moscow Kremlin’s Grand Hall, Danish Radio Concert Hall (Copenhagen), National Auditorium (Madrid), and Palais des Beaux-Arts (Brussels). Notable performances include Cardiff’s St David’s Hall, where he shared the stage with Joshua Bell and Maxim Vengerov, and a recital at Wigmore Hall with pianist Ashley Wass.

As a dedicated chamber musician, Avanesyan has collaborated with esteemed artists such as Maria João Pires, Maxim Rysanov, Andreas Brantelid, Alexander Chaushian, Lise de la Salle, Marianna Shirinyan, Lily Maisky, Natalia Gutman, and Narek Hakhnazaryan. He has performed at major festivals, including Montpellier, Menton, Strasbourg Music Festival (in memory of Yehudi Menuhin), Al Bustan, and the Copenhagen Summer Festival.

His first CD recording featured Vieuxtemps' Violin Concerto No. 2, released as part of a complete box set of the composer’s violin concertos with the Liège Philharmonic Orchestra under Patrick Davin. His critically acclaimed Dvořák album was recorded with Sinfonia Varsovia and Augustin Dumay.

In 2017, he released a chamber music album featuring works by Schumann and Brahms, performed alongside Boris Brovtsyn, Diemut Poppen, Alexander Chaushian, and Yevgeny Sudbin (BIS Records). The album was selected as an iTunes A-List recording and won the BBC Best Chamber Music Recording of the Year. In 2018, a video recital with Maria João Pires was released on Imagine Clarity, garnering millions of views worldwide.

Since 2015, Avanesyan has been a professor at the IMEP Institut Supérieur de Musique et de Pédagogie de Namur in Belgium. Born in Armenia, he moved to Belgium at age 17, studying at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels under Igor Oistrakh. He later continued his studies at the Queen Elisabeth College of Music with Augustin Dumay and at the Cologne Hochschule with Mihaela Martin. At the Queen Elisabeth College of Music, he also studied chamber music with the Artemis Quartet.

Hrachya Avanesyan plays on a J.B. Vuillaume violin (1864).