Baiba Skride (born 19 February 1981) is a Latvian classical violinist.[1][2][3][4] She was the winner of the Queen Elisabeth Violin Contest in 2001.
Background and studies
Baiba Skride comes from a very musical Latvian family: her love of music comes from her grandmother who taught her and her two sisters to sing. Her father was a famous choral conductor, and her mother plays the piano. Her sister Lauma Skride, one year younger, also plays the piano, while her two-year-older sister Linda plays the viola. In Latvia, as a three-year-old she attended a music school. At the age of four, she was already playing the violin, and just before the age of five she gave her first concert.[5]
Later, she attended a special school for musical talents in Riga. From 1995 she studied at the Conservatory of Music and Theatre in Rostock with Petru Munteanu. For a long time she commuted between the special school in Riga and the college in Rostock. She has taken masterclasses with Ruggiero Ricci and Lewis Kaplan.[6]
Baiba Skride previously played the Stradivarius "Wilhelmj" violin (1725), which was on loan to her from the Nippon Music Foundation, and then the "Ex Baron Feilitzsch" Stradivarius violin (1734), which was loaned to her from Gidon Kremer.[11] She now plays the Yfrah Neaman Stradivarius loaned to her by the Neaman family through the Beares International Violin Society.[12] Her sisters are Lauma Skride, a pianist, and Linda Skride who plays viola.
2003: Luitpold Prize (German: Luitpoldpreis) of the festival Kissinger Sommer[19]
2005: Echo Klassik, Best Young Artist Award for their debut CDs[20]
2006: Echo Klassik in the category "Concert Recording of the Year, Music of the 20th/21st Centuries" for the recording of violin concertos by Shostakovich and Janáček[21]
Discography
Until 2008, Baiba Skride was under an exclusive contract with Sony. She took the place of Hilary Hahn, who had switched to Deutsche Grammophon.[22] Since then she has collaborated with the music label Orfeo.
^"One of the most exciting young talents to have emerged since Itzhak Perlman burst upon the scene in the late 1960s. Skride possesses the rare ability to speak directly through her Stradivari in a way that has one completely forgetting the mechanics of a 'violinist at work'. The fact that hers is a live concert recording makes her achievement seem all the more staggering."
Selection disc of the month – Shostakovich/Janáček, The Strad, June 2006