Boris Kuschnirwas born into a music family in Kiev in 1948. He studied violin with Boris Belenky at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatoire and chamber music with Valentin Berlinsky of the Borodin Quartet. His many encounters with Dmitri Shostakovich (working on his last quartets) and David Oistrakh, under whom he also studied, had a lasting influence on his artistic development. His career started in 1969 when he was one of the three winners of the All-union competition in Leningrad where, in the final, he performed the Beethoven Violin Concerto with the Leningrad Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Yuri Temirkanov. He has won numerous prizes at international violin and chamber music competitions (Paris, Belgrade, Sion, Trapani, Bratislava, Florence, Trieste, Gorizia, Hamburg, Vercelli). In 1970 he founded the Moscow String Quartet and remained its member until 1979. Since 1981 he has been living in Austria. He became an Austrian citizen in 1982. In 1984, he became a Professor at the Music and Arts University of the City of Vienna and also a distinguished Professor at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz in 1999. His reputation as a teacher won international recognition with the recent outstanding success of his pupils, Julian Rachlin, Nikolaj Znaider, Sergey Dogadin, Pavel Milyukov, Lidia Baich, Alexandra Soumm and Maria Duenas. At the same time, he constantly gives masterclasses at renowned academies like the Verbier Festival Academy and Kronberg Academy and is a jury member of various international music competitions such as Queen Elizabeth Competition in Brussels, Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, Niccolo Paganini Competition in Genua, the Long Thibaud Competition in Paris. In 1984 Boris Kuschnir founded the Wiener Schubert Trio which received many prestigious awards, among them the Mozart lnterpretationspreis 1988 in Vienna and the Prize of the Ernst van Siemens Foundation 1990. Boris Kuschnir appears with such illustrious partners as Evgeny Kissin, Elisabeth Leonskaja, Boris Berezovsky, Leif Ove Andsnes, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Julian Rachlin, Nikolaj Znaider, Maxim Vengerov, Renaud Capucon, David Garrett, Yuri Bashmet, Gerard Causse, Nobuko Imai, Lawrence Power, Mischa Maisky, Boris Pergamenschikow, Natalia Gutman, Miklos Perenyi, Steven lsserlis, Gautier Cap-uc;:on, Sol Gabetta. Both as soloist and chamber musician Boris Kuschnir made numerous recordings, notably the complete Mozart pianotriosforEMI, which were released in the Mozart year 1991. In 1993 he founded the Vienna Brahms Trio which made their highly acclaimed debut at the Gidon Kremer's Lockenhaus Festival in Austria. In 1996, the Trio won First Prize at the IX International Chamber Music Competition in lllzach, France. Their recording of Schumann's complete works for Piano trio was released on the Naxos label in 1999. He was co-founder of the Kopelman Quartet in 2002 with which he has been giving concerts all over the world since and has released CDs at Nimbus Records and Wigmore Hall Live. In 2008 the President of the Republic of Austria Dr. Heinz Fischer awarded Boris Kuschnir with the"Grand Decoration of Honour in Silver for Services to the Republic of Austria" and in 2013 with the "Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and the Arts, First Class".
