Violin Virtuoso Volodja Balzalorsky – Biography

How Volodja became a classical violinist – How it all began – Study Period

Volodja’s initial study of the violin did not take place in the usual way, which is considered standard to achieve a professional level. He started playing the violin relatively late at the age of nine and seriously at sixteen.

In an interview Volodja had for Fanfare Magazine, he explained as follows:

Today I can say that I was extremely lucky, first to study with one ofz the best Slovenian violin teachers Ciril Veronek at Conservatory in Ljubljana, and then to continue my higher education in violin at famous institutions in Cologne, Moscow, Vienna and Zagreb with excellent professors and internationally renowned violinists such as:

Igor Ozim, the late Galina Barinova, Grigory Zhislin Josef Suk, Klaus Maetzl, Josip Klima, as well as all members of the famous Amadeus quartet, with whom I also had chamber music lessons for four years.

I must mention that I started playing violin relatively late, when I was 9, and seriously when I was sixteen, before 16, I had a bad history of training — even not regularly. During this period I was more sports enthusiast.

Even music, which I began to seriously listen to, when I was 13, was not classical music, but in 1969 the most popular music of that period. 

Soon I focused on listening to the exploration of various jazz bands. I was particularly impressed by some jazz violinists like Jaen Luc Ponti, Jerry Goodman, and especially the great Stephen Grapelli.

My first musical ambition was to learn violin better, to be able to improvise a bit and able to play the violin in jazz – rock band with my friends.

Of course, this also needed immediately more training (practicing). After the happy circumstances, I began increasingly to listen to classical music too. 

When I was 16, I first heard the recording on the disc by Christian Ferras performing famous Mendelssohn and Tchaikowski concertos), and the disc with famous romantic miniatures performed by Ida Haendel. 

A few weeks afterwards, when I was completely fascinated by the beauty of these two violinists play, the guest violinist in Ljubljana (my hometown) was famous David Oistrakh, performing as a soloist with the Slovenian Philharmonic. 

All this resulted in me right internal revolution, which made me literally poisoned with music and since then I’ve only had one wish, to become a musician – violinist.  With the support of my parents I started to buy all available recordings to listen to and to learn about all the most important violinists.

Of course I began to practice a lot too.

Just one year after I first heard Mendelssohn, I learned it and performed it at a school open concert.

Thanks to my professor in Ljubljana, Cyril Veronek, who immediately responded to the great change in my musical interests and began to work very intensively with me, I passed the entrance exam in Cologne (Hochschule für Musik).

There, I studied for five years. with the legendary Slovenian violin teacher Igor Ozim and  graduated with the highest grade.

Throughout my studies in Cologne, I participated in several chamber ensembles, and also had regular chamber music lessons with all members of the Amadeus Quartet and with the cellist Boris Pergamenschtschikow.

The five-year Cologne period was also the period of my most intense violin practice, and at the same time I listened to music from LPs, soon also CDs and regularly attended concerts. It was a period of exploring and discovering the beauty of chamber and symphonic music, but I never stopped listening to jazz and other genres of music.

Also very important was my one-year study period in Moscow (1980-81) at the Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Conservatory and work with renowned violinist Galina Barinova, as well as regular lessons with violin virtuoso Grigory Zhislin, who was then a professor at the Gnesin Institute.

In Moscow, I also had the opportunity to attend the lessons of other students, with well-known professors such as Leonid Kogan, Maya Glezarova, Eugenia Tchugayeva, Irina Bochkova to name just a few. This further broadened my musical horizons and violin knowledge.

Throughout the total period of study, for my personal understanding of music, with strict respect for the composer’s scores and stylistic periods, and above all for the development of my own individuality and for the courage to show it on stage, the most important was the support of the world-famous violinist Josef Suk. I was his student at the Vienna University of Music for four years (1981-85).

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Career – Early Period

While still studying and especially immediately after, Volodja devoted himself very intensively to numerous concert performances as a guest of the most important concert halls in former Yugoslavia, and soon increasingly to concert performances abroad.

Of particular importance for this period were several “debut” concerts that were rewarded with standing ovations:

• the first Volodja’s truly major success was at the final concert of the Masterclass for violin and piano duo, conducted by Franco Gulli in Trieste, in May 1979, performing Franck Sonata with New Zealand pianist Alison Laender, also documented with a live RAI recording.
• August 1979: Selected by Yogoslav Youth to participate at Ohrid Festival. This was also the first performance in Duo with Hinko Haas
• February 1981: in Ljubljana, when Volodja performed for the first time as a soloist in Brahms’ violin concerto with the Slovenian Philharmonic and the famous Slovenian conductor Anton Nanut,
• in April 1983: a very noticeable recital in Zagreb together with very talented pianist Edi Terbovc
• In April 1986:  the first performance in the famous Kolac Hall in Belgrade with splendid success, on the basis of which new concert invitations immediately followed.

The most important for this period was the intensive violin-piano duo collaboration with the German pianist Christoph Theiler from 1985-1997, as well as with the Slovenian pianist Hinko Haas, with whom Volodja Balžalorsky played in a duo from 1979 until his premature death in 2020.

Early period ensembles of Violin Virtuoso Volodja Balzalorsky:

International Concert Performances

From 1986 onwards, Volodja has received regular invitations for concert performance at music festivals and concert series in various countries,
mainly with his duo partners Christoph Theiler and Hinko Haas, as well as with his Amael Piano Trio from 2001 on…

He has also received regular invitations from many national Radio-TV stations in various countries to record and broadcast his concerts live. For several of them, Volodja Balzalorsky and his partners also made a large number of archival recordings.

As a soloist, Volodja Balžalorsky has performed notably with the Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra, Slovenian Symphony Orchestra, Ostrava Chamber Orchestra and with many other orchestras in various countries.

International chamber music collaborations and chamber music projects

Volodja personally emphasizes that one of his greatest loves and passions is chamber music.

Thus, in his more than 40-years rich career, he has devoted himself mainly to chamber music, especially in the last twenty years as a founding member of the renowned Slovenian ensemble Amael Piano Trio, as well as playing in Duo for violin and piano-currently with pianists Aleksandar Serdar and Peter Caelen and earlier as a long-term partnership with the pianists Hinko Haas, Christoph Theiler, and Jaksa Zlatar.

In 2009, in addition to the concerts of the Amael trio at the Kromeriz Festival of Contemporary Music and the San Marino Festival, Volodja also collaborated with pianist Julian Riem and gave concerts with him at the famous Gasteig in Munich. Before that, he played a few concerts in Slovenia with Julian Riem.

A few weeks later, however, he had a very successful third appearance at Weil Hall at Carnegie Hall with English pianist James Lisney.

In conjunction with his chamber music projects as a guest artist at festivals such as: Zagreb Biennale (1989), Ost-West Music Festival (1992), Aberystwyth Chamber Music Festival(1997, 1998), European Month of Culture 1997 – Georg Crumb festival in Ljubljana, A Universal Affair at Carnegie Hall (2005), SXSW Music Festival in Austin (2009, 2010), Tallinn Chamber Music Festival (2014), Evmelia Festival (2013, 2015) Volos-Agria,Greece etc, Volodja concertized with revered soloists and notable chamber musicians from all over the world.

A few of this musicians are:
Pianists: Đorde Stanetti, Croatia; Albina Šikšniūtė, Lithuania; Benjamin Rawitz, Israel; Vladimir Kovalski, Russia-USA; Michelle Schumann, Canada-USA; Brett Bachus, USA; Maria Pikoula, Greece; Marija Vrskova, North Macedonia; Saori Haji, Japan.
Violinists: Valery Oistrakh, Russia; Michael Bochmann, United Kingdom; Mark Messenger, United Kingdom; Lana Trotovsek, Slovenia; Rusanda Panfili, Austria; Irina Kovorkova, Russia
Violists: Simon Rowland Jones, United Kingdom; Luca Sanzo, Italy; Svava Bernhardsdottir, Island; Johanna Vahermägi, Estonia
Cellists: Nicholas Jones, United Kingdom, Igor Mitrović, Serbia-Slovenia, Seeli Tolvio, Finland; Elena Skvortsova, Russia;; Miloš Mlejnik, Slovenia; Andrej Petrač, Slovenia; Karmen Pečar, Slovenia,
Wind instrumentalists:
clarinetists David Campbell, United Kingdom; Milko Pravdić, Croatia, Jure Jenko, Slovenia; Andrej Zupan, Slovenia.