Violinist Philippe Graffin has concentrated on the core French repertory, reviving overlooked scores while balancing contemporary commissions with established repertoire. Several contributions of his have appeared in Hyperion’s ongoing project devoted to seldom-heard Romantic violin concertos.
Born in 1964 in Romilly-sur-Seine, Graffin studied with Josef Gingold, himself a pupil of Eugène Ysaÿe. Because Gingold accepted only a handful of students, Graffin stands as a direct embodiment of the Belgian-French lineage. He has performed widely as a concerto soloist with ensembles such as the BBC Symphony, the Residentie Orkest in The Hague, and the St. Petersburg Philharmonic. In chamber music he established the Consonances Chamber Music Festival at St-Nazaire in 2015.
His most extensive international profile stems from an active and eclectic discography. An early appearance came on a Royal Philharmonic Orchestra recording led by Yehudi Menuhin. From the late 1990s onward he maintained a sustained partnership with Hyperion, beginning in 1997 with a disc of Ysaÿe’s solo violin sonatas and other unaccompanied pieces. His initial releases remained centered on the repertory Ysaÿe championed, encompassing works by Chausson and Saint-Saëns. In 2002 he assembled Rare French Works for Violin and Orchestra, surveying pieces by Canteloube, Fauré, Ernest Guiraud, Lalo, and Saint-Saëns.
Over time Graffin has embraced a broader range of literature, recording little-known concertos by Fauré and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor—the latter in its world-premiere version—and premiering new concertos written for him by Rodion Shchedrin, David Matthews, and Vytautas Barkauskas. He supplied three installments to Hyperion’s Romantic Violin Concertos series, among them a 2011 pairing of concertos by Baron Frederic d’Erlanger and Frederic Cliffe. Additional recordings have appeared on Avie, ASV, and Resonus Classics. In 2019, collaborating with pianist Claire Désert, he issued the recital Fiddler’s Blues on Avie; in 2024 he released Rêves with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, presenting previously unknown Ysaÿe works for violin and orchestra. Graffin serves on the faculty of the Conservatoire de Paris (CNSMD).
