Alina Ibragimova, violin, Great Britain
Alina Ibragimova is a Russian-born violinist residing in the UK. She is one of the brightest and most talented young interpreters of classical music.
The Times (UK) has written that Alina Ibragimova performs with “a mixture of total abandonment and total control that is in no way contradictory” and that she is “destined to be a force in the classical music firmament for decades to come”.
Alina Ibragimova’s repertoire extends from Baroque to contemporary works, and she performs on both modern and period instruments. She plays the Venetian violin made by Pietro Guarneri in 1738. This violin was given to her by Georg von Opel.
Daughter of a famous double bass player Rinat Ibragimov, Alina Ibragimova was born in Russia in 1985. The future violinist started at the Gnessin State Musical College in Moscow, but in 1995 her father took up the post of principal double bass with the London Symphony Orchestra, and the family moved to live in England. There Alina began her studies at the Yehudi Menuhin School. Later she went on to the Royal College of Music, studying under Natalya Boyarskaya, Gordan Nikolitch and Christian Tetzlaff.
At only 28 she has already performed concertos with the world famous orchestras: the London Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Hallé, the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. She worked with outstanding conductors including Sir Charles Mackerras, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Sir Mark Philip Elder, Carlo Rizzi, Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Gianandrea Noseda.
Alina Ibragimova is famous not only in Britain. European and American audiences are familiar with her performances. In recital and chamber music the violin has appeared at venues including the Wigmore Hall London, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Salzburg Mozarteum, the Viennese Music Association, Carnegie Hall in New York, the Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels and the Vancouver Recital Society.
She has been the recipient of a number of prestigious awards including Borletti-Buitoni Trust award and Classical BRIT award for “Young British Classical Performer”. Also Alina Ibragimova was a member of the BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists scheme.
“Four notes. That’s all it took for Alina Ibragimova to entrance her audience in the first of Bath’s Bachfest concerts. As she began to play, there was an instant, magical hush in the audience. By the end of the fiendish solo violin piece [Biber Passacaglia], it scarcely seemed surprising that one audience member uttered a breathless but clearly audible ‘wow’. At moments in the Concerto the tempos seemed on the edge of plausibility, but they never toppled over, and this was a performance of exquisite, lyrical joy. Ibragimova’s spontaneous smile at the end, so different from the fierce concentration with which she’d begun, seemed to echo the audience’s delight”.
Rebecca Franks, BBC Music Magazine
