Vadim Gluzman

Violinist Vadim Gluzman has a large repertory running from Bach to contemporary works. He was mentored by Isaac Stern during the first part of his career.
Born in Ukraine in the former Soviet Union in 1973, Gluzman lived for most of his childhood in the then-Soviet city of Riga, Latvia. He was a precocious violin student, starting lessons at age seven. After studying with Roman Sne in Latvia and Zakhar Bron in Russia, he emigrated with his family to Israel in 1990, where he studied with Yair Kless in Tel Aviv. Gluzman continued his studies in the United States with Arkady Fromin, Dorothy DeLay, and Masao Kawasaki. Encouraged by Stern, Gluzman went on to win the Henryk Szeryng Foundation Career Award in 1994.
Gluzman has appeared as a soloist with many orchestras, including the Israel Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and the London Philharmonic. He has been a guest at festivals around the world, including the Verbier, Ravinia, and Jerusalem festivals, as well as the North Shore Chamber Music Festival in Northbrook, Illinois, which he founded with his wife and accompanist, pianist Angela Yoffe. Gluzman began a collaboration with the Pro Musica Chamber Orchestra in Columbus, Ohio, as a creative partner and the principal guest artist in the 2013-2014 season. He has premiered new works by Giya Kancheli, Peteris Vasks, and Sofia Gubaidulina, among others. However, the core of Gluzman’s recorded repertory is Romantic, and his performances fall into the durable Russian tradition. Gluzman’s performance schedule in the coronavirus-truncated year of 2020 included concerto performances not only with symphony orchestras in Luzern, Switzerland, and Düsseldorf, Germany but with the Youth Orchestra of Fresno in California.
Gluzman made his recording debut on the Koch International label in 1997 with an album of sonatas by Hindemith, Beethoven, and Brahms. He has been almost exclusively associated with the BIS label, for which he first recorded in 2003 (24 Preludes for violin and piano, by Lera Auerbach). Among Gluzman’s recordings of major concertos was one, in 2011, of Max Bruch's Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26; that recording was given a Diapason d’Or award. Gluzman released a recording of Brahms' Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 77, and Violin Sonata No. 1 in G major, Op. 78, on BIS in 2017. As of 2020, he had issued 16 albums on BIS, the most recent devoted to the music of Peteris Vasks.
Gluzman plays the “Ex-Leopold Auer” Stradivarius violin, made in 1690. ~ James Manheim