Aylen Pritchin & Lukas Geniusas
Biography Aylen Pritchin & Lukas Geniusas
Aylen Pritchin
Born in Saint Petersburg, Aylen studied with Pr. Elena Zaitseva in his hometown and at the prestigious Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, where he studied with Pr. Eduard Grach. In 2014, Aylen was awarded First Prize at the Long-Thibaud International Violin Competition. He was a former major prize winner at the Wieniawski, Tchaikovsky, Sion-Valais, Kreisler and Oistrakh International Violin Competitions.
His career has led him to perform in Russia and abroad, including Switzerland, Netherlands, Italy, Israel, Poland, Belgium, Bulgaria, Sweden, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Vietnam and Japan; In such prestigious venues as the Vienna Konzerthaus, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Stockholm Musikaliska, Salzburg Mozarteum, Tchaikovsky Conservatory Hall in Moscow and the Champs-Elysées Theatre in Paris.
Recent appearances and collaborations.
His recent orchestral solo performances included the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, MusicAeterna Orchestra, Orchestre National de Lille, Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire, Russian National Philharmonic Orchestra, Poznan Philharmonic Orchestra, the State Academic Symphony Orchestra of Russia “Evgeny Svetlanov”, Tatarstan National Orchestra or I Pomeriggi Orchestra among others.
He performs under the baton of prestigious conductors such as Teodor Currentzis, Maxim Emelyanychev, Cornelius Meister, Mikhail Gerts, Valentin Uryupin, Yuri Simonov, Dorian Wilson, Shlomo Mintz and Roberto Benzi.
Aylen also enjoys playing chamber music regularly with such artists as: Maxim Emelyanychev, Lukas Geniusas, Yury Favorin, Alexander Melnikov, Maxim Rysanov, Vladimir Mendelssohn or David Geringas.
The 2018/19 season sees Aylen touring with Teodor Currentzis and the MusicAeterna Orchestra with the Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto, in Russia and Japan, as well as being a guest soloist of the Svetlanov Symphony Orchestra performing the Korngold’s violin concerto in Moscow. The concert was broadcasted live on Internet. He made his debut with the Transilvania Philharmonic Orchestra in Cluj (Romania) and with the Cannes Orchestra in France under the baton of maestro Roberto Forés-Veses. In April 2019 Aylen Pritchin made his recital debut in Vancouver and Toronto (Canada) together with his duo partner pianist Lukas Geniusas.
The 2019/20 season includes his return to the Svetlanov Symphony Orchestra with the Dvorak violin concerto, a collaboration with the Omsk Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Dmitry Vasilyev as part of the Siberian Symphony Orchestra Festival, a tour in Germany with the Russian Chamber Orchestra and conductor Alexei Utkin (Cologne and Wablingen) and a Japan’s tour in which he plays with the Hiroshima Symphony Orchestra under Christian Arming and the Osaka Philharmonic Orchestra under Michiyoshi Inoue. Among Aylen’s major recital dates in the 2019/20 season is La Folle Journée in Nantes.
Highlights of the 2020/21 season feature him with Radio Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra/Vladimir Fedosseiev (Elgar), Saint-Petersburg Symphony Orchestra/Vladimir Petrenko (Tchaikovsky), Orquesta Filarmonica de Gran Canaria /Maxim Emelyanychev (Schnittke 2), Toulouse Orchestre National du Capitole/Maxim Emelyanychev (Prokofiev 2), Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra / M.Bakauskas, Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra/Y.Simonov (Mendelssohn), Scottish Chamber Orchestra/Maxim Emelyanychev (Brahms).
In chamber music, Aylen performs at the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie and collaborates with his music partners Lukas Geniusas and Yuri Favorin, as well as conductor and pianist Maxim Emelyanychev.
In December 2017 the Russian label Melodiya published Aylen Pritchin’s third album with Prokofiev´s works for violin and piano with Yury Favorin. Two other albums include Russian music for violin (Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Desyatnikov) and works for piano trio with Lukas Geniušas and Alexander Buzlov. In August 2019, the label Ad Vitam Records released his latest cd dedicated to solo violin music with some of the most important and significant of the 20th century, including the first edition ever of Tema con 8 variazioni by the composer Jean Françaix.
In December 2021, Aylen Pritchin and Maxim Emelyanychev’s album dedicated to the Brahms Violin Sonatas and recorded on period instruments has been released on Aparté and has received glowing reviews. A new CD Debussy-Hahn-Stravinsky with Lukas Geniusas will be released in 2022 on Mirare Productions.
Lukas Geniusas
“The Russian-Lithuanian pianist Lukas Geniušas has firmly established himself as one of the most exciting and distinctive artists of his generation.
Praised for his ‘brilliance and maturity’ (The Guardian), he is invited to give recitals in the most prestigious venues all over the world, among them Wigmore Hall in London, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Salle Gaveau, Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and Auditorium du Louvre in Paris, the Frick Collection in New York, the Phillips Collection in Washington, D. C., the Gilmore Keyboard Festival in Kalamazoo, Michigan, the Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa, Sala Verdi in Milan and the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory. He is also regularly invited to such festivals as La Roque d’Anthéron, Piano aux Jacobins, Rheingau, the Ruhr Piano Festival, Schloss Elmau and Lockenhaus.
Lukas Geniušas has performed with numerous orchestras, including the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Orchestre National de Lyon, Philadelphia Orchestra, NHK Symphony Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Stavanger Symphony Orchestra, St Petersburg Philharmonic, Sinfonieorchester St. Gallen, Kremerata Baltica, Russian National Orchestra, Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, Toronto Symphony, Warsaw Philharmonic and Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra, under the batons of such conductors as Valery Gergiev, Mikhail Pletnev, Leonard Slatkin, Charles Dutoit, Andrey Boreyko, Tugan Sokhiev, Saulius Sondeckis, Dmitry Sitkovetsky, Antoni Wit, Rafael Payare and Dmitry Liss, to name but a few.
Known for his innate curiosity and extensive musical interests, Lukas explores a wide variety of repertory, from the Baroque to works by contemporary composers. His current focus ranges from the Beethoven piano concertos to Hindemith’s Ludus Tonalis and John Adams, in addition to a marked penchant for Russian composers such as Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev. He is an avid chamber musician and an extremely inquisitive performer and enjoys performing new works by modern composers, as well as resurrecting rarely performed music. These aspects of his career are reflected in Lukas Geniušas’s critically acclaimed discography, which includes music by Beethoven, Brahms, Rachmaninoff (the complete preludes), Chopin (Études op.10 and 25), Prokofiev sonatas (Choc de Classica, Diapason d’Or of the Year and Gramophone Editor’s Choice) for Mirare, and works by Stravinsky, Desyatnikov and Tchaikovsky with Aylen Pritchin on Melodiya.”
