Virginie Robilliard & Péter Szabó
Biographie Virginie Robilliard & Péter Szabó
Virginie Robilliard
comes from a family of musicians and gave her first public concert at the age of five. At the age of seventeen, she was awarded first prize by the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Lyon as a pupil of Jacques Ghestem and graduated from the Juilliard School in 1993 as a full-scholarship student with Dorothy Delay.
Laureate at the age of 17 at the Long-Thibaud International Violin Competition and the 1990 Indianapolis International Violin Competition, she has performed as a soloist with orchestras such as the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic, the French Radio Philharmonic, the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra, the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, the Oradea State Symphony Orchestra, the Bogota Philharmonic Orchestra, among others, with Yuri Temirkanov, Sergiu Comissiona, Raymond Leppard, Yutaka Sado, Michel Plasson, Pierre Dervaux, Eduardo Diazmuñoz, Fabio Mechetti, Zsolt Jankó and others.
At the age of 19 she made her New York debut at Avery Fisher Hall Lincoln Center in a critically acclaimed performance by The New York Times of Bartók's Violin Concerto No. 2 conducted by Stanislaw Skrowaczewski with the Juilliard Orchestra. During her international career, Virginie Robilliard has performed and given master classes in Asia, South America, Africa, Europe, Canada and the United States. Thanks to the Mozarteum Foundation, she established a violin school in Venezuela where she lived for 10 years. She is currently Professor of Violin and Head of the String Department at the Haute Ecole de musique in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Péter Szabó
is one of the most versatile Hungarian cellists of our time. During his international career, his artistry has been widely acclaimed by leading publications such as Fono Forum, The London Times, Repertoire, Classica, and The Strad. In 2002, he received the Hungarian Classical Award of Gramophone magazine. He was awarded the Franz Liszt Prize in 2011 and the László Lajtha Prize in 2014. In 2024, he was honoured with one of Hungary’s highest state decorations, the Knight's Cross of the Hungarian Order of Merit.
Throughout his career, he has performed in more than 40 countries around the world, at the most famous concert halls—such as Wigmore Hall (London), Musikverein and Konzerthaus (Vienna), Mozarteum (Salzburg), Tonhalle (Zurich), Konzerthaus (Berlin), National Theatre of Venezuela – Caracas, and Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in New York. He has participated in the most renowned festivals and held masterclasses around the world. As a soloist, he has performed under the baton of such renowned conductors as Sándor Végh, Sir Roger Norrington, Tamás Vásáry, Iván Fischer, Peter Keuschnig, and Frank Ollu, to name just a few. As a chamber musician, he has collaborated with the legendary Zoltán Kocsis, Virginie Robilliard, and many others. Together with Gábor Takács-Nagy and
Dénes Várjon, he founded the Takács Piano Trio, which has resulted in numerous concert tours and CD recordings.
He has worked with world-renowned conductors such as Sir George Solti, Valery Gergiev, Lahav Shani and others.
His extensive discography has been released by labels including Alpha Classics, BBC Records, Channel Classics, Electrecord, Hunnia Records, Hungaroton, and Naxos. He discovered the manuscripts of five cello concertos by Ignace Pleyel, composed cadenzas for them, and prepared their piano reductions; the complete edition was published by Simrock (Boosey & Hawkes).
From 1993 he is the principal cellist of the Budapest Festival Orchestra and President of the Csaba Szabó International Society.
