Photo © Uwe Arens
EMMANUEL TJEKNAVORIAN was born in 1995 in Vienna, the son of a pianist and a conductor in a family of musicians, received violin lessons from the age of five years and appeared as a seven-year-old for the first time publicly with orchestra. Since 2011 he studies with Gerhard Schulz, former member of the world-famous Alban Berg Quartet, at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna.
Honored at the 2015 International Jean Sibelius Violin Competition for the Best Interpretation of the Violin Concerto by Jean Sibelius and winner of the second prize, Emmanuel Tjeknavorian attracted international attention. The past season took him to the most prestigious concert halls in Europe in the Rising Star cycle of the European Concert Hall organization. In addition, there were numerous important debuts, i.a. as a soloist of the Orpheum Foundation Zurich with the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich and the Deutschlandradio debut with the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin in the Berliner Philharmonie. The next meeting was with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Bruckner Orchestra Linz.
Highlights of the current season include his debuts with the world's leading ensembles such as the Gewandhaus Orchestra, the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala and the London Symphony Orchestra. He plays with conductors such as Semyon Bychkov, Riccardo Chailly and Yuri Temirkanov. Emmanuel Tjeknavorian is a regular guest at well-known festivals and plays numerous concerts in chamber music. In the summer of 2018 he won the LOTTO Prize of the Rheingau Music Festival and, together with his piano partner Maximilian Kromer, won the NORDMETALL Ensemble Prize of the Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. This season will also feature performances at the Salzburg Mozart Week on Mozart's own "Costa-Geige" and at the Grafenegg Summer Night Gala. As "Young Wilder" in Dortmund and "Great Talent" in Vienna, he will be performing in different formations at both concert halls for several seasons.
In December 2017, Emmanuel Tjeknavorian released his debut album "SOLO" at Sony Classical, which attracted a great deal of attention and received the newly founded OPUS Klassik Prize in October 2018. Since September 2017, he has presented his own monthly radio show "Der Klassik-Tjek" on Radio Klassik Stephansdom. Numerous stations reported on the young Viennese, so he was already in titles, theses, temperaments and the Tagesschau (ARD), Capriccio (BR), the Kulturzeit (3sat), in ORF2 and in "Stars of Tomorrow" with Rolando Villazon (ARTE to see).
Emmanuel Tjeknavorian plays on a Violin by Anton Stradivari, Cremona, 1698, which was kindly provided to him by a patron of the "Beare's International Violin Society" from London.
"Fabulous technology and emotional fusion" (NZZ)
"An exceptional talent: Tjeknavorian combines the virtuoso with contemplation." (Tagesspiegel)