Recital Tedi Papavrami, violin

A truly exceptional musician, Papavrami is characterised by a curiosity that knows no borders, coupled to great intellectual and artistic rigor: together these qualities have enabled him to bridge the gap between his background and less familiar horizons.

Following the death of the Albanian translator Jusuf Vrioni, in 2000 he took up the mantle of translating the works of author Ismail Kadare. This foray into the literary sphere continued in 2013 with Fugue pour Violon Seul, published by Robert Laffont. Unanimously hailed by the Press, Tedi’s autobiographical narrative recounts his past as a child prodigy in Albania, followed by his flight to the West and to freedom.

Introduced to the instrument that has since formed an integral part of his existence at the age of five by his father, a brilliant teacher, Tedi’s progress was sensational. Just three years after taking up the violin, he was playing a concert of Sarasate’s Gypsy Airs with the Tirana Philharmonic Orchestra. At eleven, he gave a public performance of Paganini’s Concerto no. 1, complete with Emile Sauret’s nerve-jangling cadenza.

Invited to Paris, the young virtuoso became a student of Pierre Amoyal’s at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris. In addition to many concerts, at this period he made occasional appearances in TV programmes, such as ‘Le Grand Echiquier’.

In the wake of a slew of prizes, in the 1990s Tedi started carving out a career as a soloist and chamber musician, collaborating as a soloist with orchestral conductors of the stature of Kurt Sanderling, Antonio Pappano, Armin Jordan, Emmanuel Krivine, Manfred Honeck, François-Xavier Roth, Thierry Fischer, Gilbert Varga, and Matthias Aeschenbacher…

On the chamber music side, he was a member of the Quatuor Schumann, a piano quartet, for nine years. In concert he appears with partners of the calibre of Philippe Bianconi, Nelson Goerner, Maria João Pires, Martha Argerich, Gary Hoffman, Marc Coppey, Paul Meyer, and Lawrence Power.

Since 2011, he has been working on Beethoven’s violin sonatas and piano trios together with cellist Xavier Phillips and pianist François Frédéric Guy, musicians with whom he appears on a regular basis. 

Presently residing in Geneva, Switzerland, Tedi has been teaching violin at the H.E.M. since September 2008. He plays on a 1727 Stradivarius, the Reynier, lent him by the Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy group.

In 2014, Tedi Papavrami was awarded the year’s ‘Solo Instrumentalist’ Diapason d’Or and a Choc Classica 2014 for a disc devoted to works for violin alone by Eugène Ysaÿe.