Alina Ibragimova

Violinist Alina Ibragimova rose to prominence as a prodigy during her teenage years and early twenties, earning particular attention through extensive chamber music activity. Her partnership with pianist Cédric Tiberghien has yielded well-received recordings of the complete Mozart and Beethoven violin sonatas.

Born September 28, 1985, in Polevskov, Russia, then part of the USSR, she began violin lessons at age four. The next year she entered Moscow’s Gnessin State Musical College, and twelve months later she appeared as soloist with the Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra. Both parents were musicians; in 1996 her father was appointed principal double bass of the London Symphony Orchestra, while her mother joined the faculty of the Yehudi Menuhin School, where Ibragimova enrolled as a student. Together with Nicola Benedetti she performed Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins and Orchestra in D minor, BWV 1043, under Menuhin’s direction and played part of the same work at his funeral three weeks later.

She pursued further studies at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the Royal College of Music in London, concluding her training with private lessons from Christian Tetzlaff. Several international competition wins followed in the early 2000s. In 2005 she both played and directed the Kremerata Baltica in a Mozart concerto, an event that secured her selection as a BBC New Generation Artist for 2005–2007 and launched a busy career as soloist and chamber musician. Concerto engagements have included leading British orchestras as well as the Seattle Symphony and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen.

Hyperion signed her in 2007, issuing her debut album of works by Karl Amadeus Hartmann. In duo recitals with Tiberghien and others she has presented the complete Beethoven violin sonatas at Wigmore Hall (later released on the hall’s own label) and has appeared at the Musikverein in Vienna, Carnegie Hall, and the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. Equally at home on modern and period instruments, she co-founded the historically informed string quartet Chiaroscuro with fellow Royal College of Music students and continues to perform with the group.

Remaining with Hyperion, she recorded the complete Mozart violin sonatas and, in 2019, the Brahms violin sonatas, both with Tiberghien. In 2020 she returned to Russia to record the Shostakovich violin concertos with the State Academic Symphony Orchestra of Russia “Evgeny Svetlanov” under Vladimir Jurowski; the following year she released a recording of Paganini’s 24 Caprices. An album of Mendelssohn’s complete violin sonatas appeared on Hyperion in 2022.