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The Hungarian-born violinist, Kristóf Baráti, spent a large part of his childhood in Venezuela. He began his violin studies at the age of 5 and already from the age of 8 he made his first solo performances with the leading Venezuelan orchestras. At the age of 11 he was invited to do a recital in Montpellier in the frame of the prestigious "Festival de Radio France". His studies continued in Budapest with Miklós Szenthelyi and Vilmos Tátrai in the Franz Liszt Academy of Music. During his studies hr participated at the Festival de Radio France in Montpellier (1990); was the “Best Performer” of the Elba Festival; won 1st Prize at the Rodolfo Lipizer Competition in Gorizia, Italy (1995), and 2nd Prize at the Margaret Long and Jacques Thibaud Competition in Paris. In 1997 his career took a new turn after getting 3rd prize and the audience prize at the highly prestigious Queen Elisabeth competition in Brussels, being the youngest finalist. After this success he redefines his violin technique with Eduard Wulfson, whose knowledge was influenced by great violinists of the 20th century such as Nathan Milstein, Yehudi Menuhin and Henryk Szeryng.
Kristóf Baráti performs in important concert halls around the world with major orchestras and conductors, such as Kurt Masur, Marek Janovski, Jiri Belohlavek, Yuri Bashmet, Yoel Levi, Andrew Manze, Yuri Temirkanov and Eiji Oue. Baráti regularly performs in Hungary with the Budapest Festival Orchestra, conducted by Iván Fischer, and with the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Zoltán Kocsis. His chamber music partners have included the cellist Natalia Gutman, the trumpeter Gábor Boldoczki, the pianist Evgeni Koroliov, Mario Brunello and Michel Portal.
In 2001, Kristóf Baráti opened the Colmar Festival in France as soloist under the direction of Vladimir Spivakov. For the past three years, he has been a Guest Professor (along with Ida Haendel, Vadim Repin, and Natalia Gutman) at the master-classes organized by Eduard Wulfson, first at the Château de Champs-sur-Marne and in 2005 at the Sorbonne in Paris. At the invitation of the French Senate, Baráti gave the final concert of the "Raphael: Grace and Beauty" exhibition in the Luxembourg Museum in Paris. He performed works which demand a particular virtuosity: the two sonatas of Eugène Ysaye, H.W. Ernst’s Last Rose of Summer, and J.S. Bach’s Partita No. 3 (played on the 1734 Guarneri del Gesú “ex–Haddock“). On June 18, 2002, with the support of the Pleyel Foundation, Baráti was invited to perform a special concert in which he repeated Nathan Milstein’s achievement of performing on one evening J.S. Bach’s 6 Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin (BWV 1001-1006) (on a rare Stradivarius, the “ex-Cobbett” from 1706, played for the first time in France). In 2006, he made his German debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker under the direction of Kirill Karabits.
Kristóf Baráti has received several further prizes in the recent years such as the Elba Festival’s Best Performer, the Prima Prize for classical music in Hungary, and in October 2010 he won the First Prize at the 6th International Paganini Violin Competition in Moscow, considered one of the most prestigious violin competitions in the world.
Kristóf Baráti plays on the 1703 "Lady Harmsworth" made by Antonio Stradivarius, kindly offered by the Stradivarius Society of Chicago.
Discography: Ravel: Violin sonata No. 2; Béla Bartók: Solo violin sonata; and Bowen: Piano sonatas No. 5, with Severin von Eckardstein (Piano) (Saphir Productions 2007); Paganini: Violin concertos 1 & 2, with Eiji Oue, NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover (Berlin Classics 2009), J.S. Bach: Six Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin (BWV 1001-1006) (Berlin Classics 2010). |
