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Rostislav Krimer

Rostislav Krimer
Instrument:piano / conductor
Country :Belarus-Germany

The historical recording of all 4 chamber symphonies by Miezysław Weinberg has received several Opus Klassik and ICMA Award nominations, received 5 stars from BBC Magazine, CD of the week by Norman Lebrecht among other top critics worldwide.

Rostislav Krimer is also the founder and artistic director of the Ost-West-Festival NRW, which will welcome the best musicians in the world in 2023, where the Friedensorchester East-West Chamber Orchestra will once again be the orchestra-in-residence.

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pianist / conductor

A true servant of music, Rostislav Krimer is regularly accompanied by outstanding musicians, either as chamber music partners or as his soloists when conducting the Orchestra-For-Peace he founded in 2015, the East-West Chamber Orchestra. Gidon Kremer, Maxim Vengerov, Viktor Tretyakov,m Fazil Say and Julian Rachlin are regular and long-standing companions. He has played with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, the Moscow Soloists and the Kremerata Baltica, among others.

He was a long-time duo partner and close musical friend of legendary pianist Paul Badura-Skoda, with whom he performed 4-hand recitals and concertos and recorded a Mozart double concerto, released in 2014. Krimer was also the only duo partner until the last days of the great maestro after Jörg Demus, with whom Badura-Skoda played for more than half a century.

His close collaboration with Krzysztof Penderecki and performances of his piano concerto “Resurrection”, which he worked on together with the composer, deserve special mention.

In addition to his concert activities, Rostislav Krimer has been made a friend of UNICEF and has been actively involved in charitable projects for children for many years. The annual UNICEF gala dinner with Rostislav Krimer & Friends was always a great success. In 2018, Rostislav Krimer was also awarded the honorary title – Star Ambassador of the 2nd European Games. Recently, Krimer was also elected Associate of the Royal Academy of Music in London.

An important colleague and longtime collaborator was Yuri Bashmet, with whom he has collaborated on hundreds of concertos and chamber music projects, including a world premiere of the Concerto for Viola, Piano and Orchestra dedicated to Yuri Bashmet and Rostislav Krimer by composer Valery Voronov. Rostislav Krimer was also the founder, general and artistic director of the annual Yuri Bashmet International Music Festival, which for 15 years has regularly presented well-known artists and young talents from all over the world on one stage. The festival, led by Krimer, created a music academy for youth, helped many young composers and saw legends – Sofia Gubaidulina, Gija Kancheli, Peteris Vasks, Erkki-Sven Tüür, Krzysztof Penderecki and Valentin Silvestrov.

In 2018 he had the honor of giving a world premiere of the newly founded play by Dmitri Shostakovich, which he performed together with Nils Mönkemeyer at the Shostakovich Festival and in the presence of the composer’s widow, Irina Antonovna Shostakovich.

Rostislav Krimer was born in Belarus and has lived in the Beethoven city of Bonn since 2000. He studied at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, the Hochschule für Musik in Cologne and the Royal Academy of Music in London. The recital that launched his international rise took place at London’s Cadogan Hall in 2006 and received critical acclaim. Since then he has performed at renowned festivals in Aix-en-Provence, Delft, Lockenhaus, Ljubljana, Varna, at the Beethovenfest Bonn, Enescu Festival and at the Villa Medici in Rome. Further invitations have taken him to major stages around the world, including the Berlin Philharmonic, the Great Tchaikovsky Hall, the Queen Elisabeth Hall and St. Martin-in-the-Fields.

Rostislav Krimer is chief conductor and artistic director of the East-West Chamber Orchestra, which consists of the best artists from East and West – concertmasters and soloists of major orchestras, prize winners of worldwide competitions such as the Tchaikovsky, ARD, Long Thibaud and Paganini competitions – and who play valuable instruments such as Stradivarius, Guarneri-del-Gesu, Amati and Goffriller.

The historical recording of all 4 chamber symphonies by Miezysław Weinberg has received several Opus Klassik and ICMA Award nominations, received 5 stars from BBC Magazine, CD of the week by Norman Lebrecht among other top critics worldwide. Rostislav Krimer is also the founder and artistic director of the Ost-West-Festival NRW, which will welcome the best musicians in the world in 2023, where the Friedensorchester East-West Chamber Orchestra will once again be the orchestra-in-residence.