Liya Petrova
violoniste
Liya Petrova will be giving a number of concerts in France this summer, notably at the Rencontres Musicales de Nîmes at the end of August, a festival of which she is co-artistic director.
These concerts will give audiences the chance to discover the Rovelli violin on which she has recently been playing, the incredible Guarnerius del Gesù, which is making its return to the stage almost 200 years after its last public appearance.
A Parisian at heart, violinist Liya Petrova was born in Bulgaria and has lived in the French capital for ten years.
Influenced by the extremely unfavourable economic climate in their country in the mid-90s, Liya Petrova's parents did not want their daughter to embark on an artistic career, which they considered far too dangerous, and refused to give her any musical training.
In the end, it was her uncle, a professional musician, who introduced her to the violin on the sly, and so she received her first lessons at the age of four. Her talent and abilities were soon spotted: she gave her first professional concert with an orchestra at the age of five, and a year later won the Unesco prize for "youngest artist" as well as the Mozart Medal, distinctions that led her to give her first concert in Paris at the age of 6.
At the age of 11 she left for Germany to study at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Rostock, where her classmates were at least twice her age. She went on to complete her training in Vienna, Brussels, Lausanne and Berlin with some of Europe's greatest teachers.
In 2016, she won the First Grand Prize of the Carl Nielsen International Competition in Denmark, a composer whose concerto she recorded with the Odense Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kristiina Poska for Orchid Classics in 2018.
Her repertoire ranges from Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms to Sibelius, Walton and Bartók. Since 2020, she has been recording for the Mirare label: a first disc featuring sonatas by Beethoven, Britten and Barber, followed in 2021 by violin concertos by Beethoven and Mozart. Her latest disc, Momentum 1, released in 2023, highlights the Walton concerto and the Respighi sonata, two very rarely recorded works given in concert. She plays alongside London's Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Duncan Ward, and pianist Adam Laloum. Momentum 2, the second opus in this diptych, is due in 2025 and will include the Korngold concerto with the same orchestra and the Strauss sonata with pianist Alexandre Kantorow.
The violinist enjoys a privileged relationship with the British orchestra, as well as with the Orchestre de Paris and the Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France; she performs regularly at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Philharmonie de Paris, the Boulez Saal in Berlin, the Isar Philharmonie in Munich...
In 2022, together with Alexandre Kantorow and cellist Aurélien Pascal, Liya Petrova founded the Rencontres Musicales de Nîmes, a chamber music festival of which they are joint artistic directors.
In 2020, she also created the "Paris Musikfest" festival, the latest edition of which took place in mid-March at the Salle Cortot in Paris.
Since 2023, she has been playing the 'Rovelli', a violin created by Guarneri del Gesù in 1742 and made available to her by private patrons.
The "Rovelli
Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù, born in 1698 and died in 1744, was a luthier from Cremona. A contemporary of Stradivari, he is regarded as the other genius of violin making. However, his output was much rarer and shorter in duration, with only around a hundred instruments to his name. The "Rovelli" violin, made in 1742, takes its name from the soloist Pietro Rovelli, who owned it until his death in 1838.
The virtuoso musician Paganini also owned a violin from this workshop, an instrument from 1743 that he nicknamed 'Il Cannone'. Rovelli and Paganini challenged each other to duels, which were very fashionable at the time. When Rovelli died, Paganini tried to buy back his rival's violin, but the family refused. At the end of the 19th century, it was sold to the French ambassador to Rome, Camille Barrère, an amateur violinist and instrument collector. Today, it belongs to a couple of patrons who have supported Liya Petrova since her arrival in France.
Since the death of Pietro Rovelli in 1838, this incredible instrument has not been played in public, so it is reappearing on stage almost two hundred years later.
Liya Petrova describes her exceptional instrument as having "extraordinary depth", with "telluric" lows and "solar" highs.
Martin Coulon
ROYAL ARTS VISIONS: LIYA PETROVA