Czech Philharmonic, Leonidas Kavakos • Dvořák Prague Festival

Leonidas Kavakos

violin, conductor

Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos is recognized across the world as an artist of rare quality, combining unparalleled technique with captivating musicality and interpretative originality. He regularly collaborates with leading ensembles and conductors and performs as a soloist in the world’s most prestigious concert halls and festivals.

As a soloist, he works with elite orchestras such as the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonics and the London Symphony Orchestra. In the 2025/26 season, he will appear with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. In recent years, he has also firmly established himself as a conductor, appearing with the Czech Philharmonic, the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra, and the Minnesota Orchestra, among others.

In 2022, he founded the ApollΩn Ensemble, a chamber group of elite Greek musicians who are in increasing demand internationally. With this ensemble, he performs at the Verbier, Edinburgh International, and Santander festivals, as well as in London’s Wigmore Hall and the Vienna’s Musikverein. In 2025 he takes over as the Artistic Director of the „Classic Revolution“ Festival at Lotte Concert Hall, Seoul.

He records exclusively for Sony Classical. To mark the Beethoven anniversary, he released Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, which he performed both as soloist and conductor with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, and reissued the complete Beethoven sonatas with Enrico Pace, originally recorded in 2007 and awarded the Echo Klassik Instrumentalist of the Year. Together with Emanuel Ax and Yo-Yo Ma, he also released the acclaimed album Beethoven for Three, featuring two Beethoven symphonies arranged for piano trio.

Leonidas Kavakos was born into a musical family in Athens, where he now curates annual masterclasses for violin and chamber music, attracting young artists from all over the world. In 2024, he was appointed professor of violin at the Basel Academy of Music. He performs on the 1734 „Willemotte“ violin by Antonio Stradivari.