vlad maistorovici
violin
As concert violinist, Vlad Maistorovici's performances display 'technical assuredness, balanced by interpretative willingness to push boundaries that can, and often does make sparks fly' (Musicweb International on his Wigmore Hall debut). Always faithful to the concertos and chamber music of the great composers of the past, Maistorovici does not stop at performing the established repertoire at major venues and festivals, such as South Bank Centre, Cadogan Hall, The Sage Gateshead, Salle Flagey Bruxelles, Studio Ernest Ansermet Geneva, Kulturhaus Helferei Zurich, Romanian Athenaeum Bucharest, Great Hall of the St. Petersburg Conservatoire, Merkin Hall New York, Verbier Festival, St. Prex Festival, Spoleto Festival, Enescu Festival, SoNoRo Festival. He has inspired, as a soloist or as part of the London-based Mercury Quartet, over 20 new works by composers such as Mark Anthony Turnage, Jonathan Cole, Mark Simpson, Steven Daverson, Charlotte Bray, Edmund Finnis, Laurent Durupt, Diana Rotaru, Dan Dediu. With the same ensemble he has explored contemporary classical music improvisation in Mercury Acoustic, released by Gabriel Prokofiev's label, NonClassical. In season 2012-13 Maistorovici took up the position of First Solo Violin of Ensemble Contrechamps in Geneva, where he performed the complete works for string quartet by Anton Webern and extensive 20th and 21st Century repertoire. Maistorovici plays a 1751 Nicolò Gagliano violin, kindly provided by the Ratiu Family Charitable Foundation.
'Catchy and sonorous' (Musical America), featuring 'vivid contrasts' (Financial Times) and 'clarity of expression' (Actualitatea Muzicala Bucharest), his compositions are championed by world-class ensembles and artists. Informed by his experience as performer, his works are as diverse as the artists and institutions that commissioned them: from the 'wonderful swirl of sounds' (The Classical Reviewer) of Halo (commissioned by the London Symphony Orchestra and recorded under the baton of François-Xavier Roth), or the ironic dadaist REM_X (Vis cu vampiri) (commissioned by Bucharest International Week of New Music), to the rhapsodic Concert Transilvan (premiered by Dmitry Sitkovetsky and the New European Strings), Maistorovici 'strikes a different note' (The Daily Telegraph). In 2012 the Romanian Cultural Institute in London has inaugurated the season with a concert entitled Night Music: the chamber works of Vlad Maistorovici. In 2014, under the directorship of Christian Badea, the project was revived at the Sibiu/Hermanstadt International Festival with site-specific video mapping, as part of an artist-in-focus series of three concerts that also saw him perform Brahms and Ligeti horn trios with Martin Owen and Dario Bonuccelli. In 2018, Orquestra Filarmonica de Goias under the directorship of British conductor Neil Thomson presents Bohemian Seasons, Maistorovici's residency in the double role of composer and soloist, featuring works by Vivaldi, Enescu, Arvo Pärt, Max Richter and Queen alongside a selection of Maistorovici's symphonic music, including Microcosm (written for the LSO), REM_X_XL, Ploiesti Polyphonies, Concert Transilvan and the world premiere of Just Fantasy, newly commissioned by the OFG.
Born in Romania (1985), he is a former pupil of the Carmen Sylva Art School. At age 16, with the support of Lory Wallfisch, he gained a full scholarship at The Yehudi Menuhin School, where he continued his violin studies with Natalia Boyarskaya. He studied violin with Felix Andrievsky and composition with Mark-Anthony Turnage and Jonathan Cole at the Royal College of Music in London, and later violin with Pierre Amoyal on a Soloist Master degree at the Conservatoire de Lausanne. He studied with Oliver Knussen, Colin Matthews and Magnus Lindberg in Aldeburgh, Giaccomo Manzoni in Fiesole and Dan Dediu in Bucharest on a PHD in Composition. He is the winner of the George Enescu Composition Prize, Clive Christian Composition Award, Golden Medal of the Berliner International Competition, The Tillett Trust Performer Platform, Young Concert Artist Trust and Remember Enescu International Competition. He has given violin and composition masterclasses at the Lilla Akademien Stokholm, Dartington International Summer School, Geneva Conservatoire and Bucharest National University of Music.
In 2015 he has founded vibrate!festivalin the city of Brasov, Transylvania, an event that explores ways of refreshing the listening experience of classical music. Bringing together world-class innovative artists from all across Europe and beyond, the festival reaches out to a wide audiences through eclectic repertoire and cross-discipline projects in alternative spaces.