Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra,
Conrad van Alphen,
Ivan Pochekin,
Miroslav Kultyshev

Miroslav Kultyshev was born in Leningrad in 1985. In 2004 he graduated from the Specialised Secondary School of the Conservatoire (class of Z. M. Zuker). At present he is a student of the St Petersburg State Conservatoire (class of Professor A. M. Sandler).

In 2007 he won the XIII International Tchaikovsky Competition. Immediately after the success on the Peter Tchaikovsky Competition Miroslav Kultyshev made his debut in Poland at the International Chopin Festival in Duszniki.

His concert career began when he was just six years old. At the age of ten he made his debut at the Great Hall of the St Petersburg Philharmonic, performing Mozart´s Concerto in D Minor under Yuri Temirkanov.

Miroslav Kultyshev has won prizes at many international competitions, among them the International Heyden Foundation (1993), A Step Towards Mastery (1995) and Traditions and the Present (Grand Prix, 1995). Prize-winner at the Moscow International Heinrich Neuhaus Young Pianists´ Competition and the International Music Festival Virtuosi of 2000 (1999).
Recipient of the Hope of Russia prize (1999, and Grand Prix, 2000).

Grant-recipient of the International Yuri Bashmet Charitable Foundation (1999) and of the St Petersburg Philharmonic Society (1995-2004).
In 2001 he received a youth grant from Russia´s prestigious and esteemed Triumph independent prize. For a long time Miroslav Kultyshev was the youngest person in Who´s Who in St Petersburg (from 2002).

In 2005 Miroslav Kultyshev won first prize and the Gold Medal at the International Delphi Games (Kiev, Ukraine). In 2005 Miroslav Kultyshev was awarded the Order of the Griffon for his considerable contribution to music.

Miroslav Kultyshev has often been invited to perform concerts at music festivals, such as Kissinger Sommer (Germany, from 2002-2006) and Yuri Bashmet´s festival The Island of the Elba – Europe´s Musical Island (Italy,1997, 2003). He has also appeared at the Mecklenburg Festspiele Vorpommern (Germany, 2006), Stars of the White Nights (2007), Septembre Musical (Switzerland, 2007) and the International Conservatoires Week (2007).

In 2006 and 2007 he trained at the Holland Music Sessions International Academy. Since 2006 he has been a grant-recipient and active participant of programmes run by the St Petersburg House of Music.

Miroslav Kultyshev has performed at leading concert venues in St Petersburg and Moscow as well as at world-famous venues such as the Musikverein in Vienna, Salzburg´s Mozarteum, the Lincoln Center (Avery Fisher Hall) in New York and Suntory Hall (Tokyo). As a young pianist, he has worked with such conductors as Valery Gergiev, Vladimir Ashkenasi, Yuri Bashmet, Mark Gorenstein, Konstantin Orbelyan, Vasily Sinaiski, Nikolai Alexeyev, Alexander Dmitriev and Sergei Roldugin.
Has toured to Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Italy, the UK, the USA, Japan, South Korea, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Lithuania.

Ivan Pochekin is one of the most brilliant violinists of the Russian school in his generation. He rose to stardom in 2005 after winning the 3rd Niccolò Paganini International Violin Competition in Moscow. Ivan Pochekin has performed under the baton of such eminent conductors as Valery Gergiev, Mikhail Pletnev, Vladimir Spivakov, Vladimir Jurowski, Alexander Sladkovsky, Yuri Simonov, Vladimir Fedoseyev, Gintaras Rinkevičius, Mark Gorenstein, Friedrich Haider, Mladen Tarbuck, Sergei Skripka, Dmitry Liss, Ignat Solzhenitsyn, Jan Latham-Koenig, Fabio Mastrangelo, and Charles Olivieri-Munroe.

Ivan has participated in various festivals, among them “The Musical Kremlin,” the Moscow Easter Festival, "La Folle Journée" in Nantes, and "Pianoscope" in Beauvais. In 2008 and 2013, on Denis Matsuev’s invitation, he performed in the "Crescendo" Festival in Kaliningrad and Pskov and the “Stars on Lake Baikal” Festival in Irkutsk. In September 2014, the violinist was honored to play the legendary ex-Paganini violin by Carlo Bergonzi, provided courtesy of Maxim Viktorov’s family, during the Grand Festival of the Russian National Orchestra when he, the Russian National Orchestra and maestro Pletnev performed Niccolò Paganini’s Violin Concerto No. 2.

Over the years, Ivan Pochekin has collaborated with the Yevgeny Svetlanov State Academic Symphony Orchestra of Russia, the Mariinsky Theater Orchestra, the Moscow Philharmonic Academic Symphony Orchestra, the National Philharmonic Orchestra of Russia, the Tchaikovsky Great Symphony Orchestra, the Russian National Orchestra, the Republic of Tatarstan’s State Symphony Orchestra, the Urals Philharmonic Orchestra, the State Academic Chamber Orchestra of Russia, the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra, the Republic of Korea Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra, the Dubrovnik Symphony Orchestra, the Sofia Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Oviedo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Deutsches Kammerorchester, and the Basel Symphony Orchestra.

In 2006, the violinist recorded music by Niccolò Paganini and Ernest Chausson on a debut CD sponsored by the Violin Art Foundation. In the same year, "PhilArtis" Vienna in Austria released an album entitled “Chanson Russe” with Ivan’s recordings of works by Sergei Prokofiev, Karol Szymanowski, Peter Tchaikovsky, Igor Stravinsky and Aram Khachaturian.

In August 2011, Ivan Pochekin signed a contract with "Naxos" Records, an internationally famous classical music label, to record two albums of music by Niccolò Paganini, including his Violin Concertos No. 5 and 6 and several virtuoso violin pieces. The albums were released to receive highly enthusiastic critical acclaim.

Ivan Pochekin began to play the violin at the age of five under Galina Turchaninova. His subsequent violin teachers were Maya Glezarova, Viktor Tretyakov, and Rainer Schmidt. The violinist owes much of his early progress to his mother, who taught him for a decade.

In 2002, the musician debuted at the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, performing Sergei Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2.

The artist collaborates creatively with Boris Berezovsky, Henri Demarquette, Tatiana Grindenko, Rainer Schmidt, Alexander Knyazev, Alexander Gindin, Artyom Dervoed, Philipp Kopachevskiy, and Yuri Favorin.

Ivan Pochekin also plays the viola.

A special performing partner of Ivan Pochekin’s is his brother, violinist Mikhail Pochekin, with whom they play as a duo.