Yuri Kalnits & Michael Csányi-Wills
Biographie Yuri Kalnits & Michael Csányi-Wills
Yuri Kalnits
He has participated in festivals throughout the world such as Festival Musicales Internationales Guil-Durance (France), Young Artist Peninsula Music Festival (USA), Festival Cziffra (France), Waterford International Music Festival (Ireland), Irina Kandinskaya and Friends (Russia), Pharos Trust Festival (Cyprus), Festival “Musica da camera” (Germany), Festival International Ciudad de Ubeda (Spain), Beyond the music Festival (Spain), Loch Shiel Spring Festival (Scotland), Ljubljana International Festival and has played at many important venues including The Purcell Room, Kings Place, St. John’s Smith Square, Barbican, St. Martin-in the-Fields, Small Hall of Moscow Conservatoire, Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center and Suntory Hall. Tours have taken him to Russia, Ireland, Germany, Israel, France, Switzerland, Spain, Greece, USA, Hong Kong and Cyprus. A dedicated chamber musician, Yuri has worked among others with such artists as Ivry Gitlis, Eduard Brunner , Emanuel Abbühl, Roger Chase and Alexander Chaushian.
He joined the Erato Piano Trio in 2010 and has since performed with the group at many prestigious venues across the UK and abroad, most recently in their much acclaimed Purcell Room debut and released a CD recording on Toccata Classics.
As a concerto soloist he has appeared with the London Festival Orchestra, Mozart Festival Orchestra, Arpeggione Chamber Orchestra, London Soloist Chamber Orchestra, Novosibirsk Symphony Orchestra, Kazan Chamber Orchestra “La Primavera”, London Musical Arts Ensemble, Minsk Symphony Orchestra and the New Philharmonia Koln to name a few and his playing has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 as well as New Zealand national radio. Yuri is one of the organisers and a jury member for the Moscow String Project, a series of masterclasses and competition aiming to provide an opportunity for young players to obtain scholarships to leading European conservatoires.
Plans for the current season include tours to China, Germany, Russia, and Montenegro as well as a return to the recording studio for the final volume of the complete works for violin by Weinberg and a CD of music by Prokofiev sponsored by the Prokofiev Trust. Together with cellist Julia Morneweg Yuri also co-directs the London concert series ChamberMusicBox which brings together leading British and European artists. Born in Moscow into a musical family, he received his first violin lessons from his father and went on to become a pupil at Moscow’s Central Music School and later at the Gnessin Music School for Gifted Children. At the age of 16 he began studying at the Royal College of Music (London) with Professor Itzhak Rashkovsky, winning several major College prizes, including the Foundation Scholarship, W.H. Reed, Isolde Menges prizes and Leonard Hirsch Prize for the outstanding string player of the year. He went on to win major prizes, notably the Bromsgrove and Watford Music Festivals in England, the Yehudi Menuhin Award from the Sudborough Foundation, KPMG/Martin Musical Scholarship (UK), Cziffra Foundation competition (France), Web Concert Hall Competition (USA), Barthel Prize from the Concordia Foundation.
Upon graduation from the RCM Yuri was awarded the Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother Scholarship for postgraduate studies there. He completed his training with Yfrah Neaman at the Guildhall School of Music and Vasko Vassiliev at Trinity College of Music whilst receiving further artistic guidance from eminent musicians such as Shlomo Mintz, Abram Shtern, Igor Oistrakh, Edward Grach, Sergei Fatkulline, Sylvia Rosenberg and Valentin Berlinsky
