Artistic Director — Philippe Graffin
Philippe Graffin is renowned for his inquisitive musicianship and commitment to expanding the violin repertoire. His extensive discography has attracted international attention for its rediscoveries and premieres, from forgotten concertos to newly commissioned works and rare manuscript versions. In 2024 he released Rêves (AVIE), featuring the world premiere recordings of two Ysaÿe concertos he helped resurrect, performed with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Jean-Jacques Kantorow.
A graduate of the Paris Conservatoire at 16, Graffin continued his studies with Joseph Gingold at Indiana University and with Miriam Fried and Philippe Hirschhorn in the Netherlands. Yehudi Menuhin invited him to make his debut recording with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra after hearing him at the Kreisler Competition.
He has performed worldwide, appearing at the BBC Proms, Lincoln Center, and with orchestras including the St Petersburg Philharmonic and Gothenburg Symphony. In 2003 he performed Shchedrin’s Concerto Cantabile under Rostropovich, leading the composer to write Concerto Parlando for him.
Graffin has premiered numerous contemporary works and championed unjustly neglected repertoire, notably Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Violin Concerto. His recording of Elgar’s Concerto in its original pre-Kreisler version was named by BBC Record Review (2022) among its three favourite recordings of all time.
Founder and long-time director of Festival Consonances in St Nazaire, he has also created projects linking music with literature and film, and has appeared in several major television documentaries. In 2018 he completed and premiered a previously unknown Seventh Solo Sonata by Ysaÿe. A frequent jury member of major international competitions including the Tchaikovsky, ARD, Jacques Thibaud and Queen Elisabeth competitions, Philippe Graffin teaches at the Conservatoire de Paris and the Royal Conservatory of Brussels. He plays a violin attributed to Domenico Busano (Venice, 1730).
