Phillipe Graffin
violin
Philippe Graffin has gained a reputation in the French violin repertoire and has special affection for the works of British composers. He has commissioned or been the dedicatee of many contemporary works.
Invited to make his first recording by Yehudi Menuhin, Philippe’s discography now includes over thirty concertos including many world premières such as that of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a work he performed at the BBC Proms. His recording of the Saint-Saëns concertos was the first volume of Hyperion’s ‘Romantic Violin’ series.
He has performed with many of Europe’s finest symphony orchestras and has strong relationships with many chamber orchestras. He tours regularly in South Africa, with the orchestras of Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban.
In recital he has performed at Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, the Palazetto Bru-Zane in Venice and London’s Wigmore Hall among others and for series such as France’s Concerts du Poche and Rive Gauche Musique. He was the founding artistic director of the ‘Consonances’ festival in Saint-Nazaire throughout its 25-year history. Graffin curated ‘Ysaÿe’s Knokke’, a festival in the town in which Ysaÿe had his summer residence; the 2nd edition takes place in 2019. Following the success of his project in with Gerard Depardieu in Brussels in 2017, in January 2019 Graffin started a new multi-venue festival in the city, ‘Traces’.
A former pupil of Josef Gingold, Philippe now gives masterclasses throughout Europe himself and is a professor at the Paris and Brussels Conservatoires.