Georgy Kovalev, Viola

Biography

Georgy Kovalev was born into a family of musicians in Tblisi, Georgia, in 1990. Following his graduation in 2008 as a member of Yuri Bashmet's viola class at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory Moscow, he studied with Nobuko Imai at the Haute Ecole de Musique in Geneva, and with Matthias Buchholz at the Musikhochschule Köln. At the moment he is studying at the Kronberg Academy. He has taken masterclasses with renowned artists such as Kim Kashkashian, Robert Mann, Pamela Frank, Gábor Takács-Nagi, Seiji Ozawa, Ivry Gitlis and others.Georgy Kovalev is a keen and active chamber musician and has gained substantial experience at various chamber music academies and festivals. He has taken part in the lnternational Music Academy Switzerland with Seiji Ozawa, the Aurora Chamber Music Festival in Sweden, the Verbier Festival Academy, where he won the Neva-Foundation special prize. Among the others he performed together with Gidon Kremer, Steven Isserlis, Christian Tetzlaff, Yuri Bashmet, Fazil Say.Georgy Kovalev has won prizes in several international competitions. In 2013 he won second prize in the Yuri Bashmet International Viola Competition in Moscow. He was awarded further prizes in the Walter Witte International Viola Competition in Germany and in the International Johannes Brahms Competition in Pörtschach, Austria.