Violinist MIKHAIL KOPELMAN, renowned for his style of immense grace and beauty combined with flawless technique, has performed in a dizzying array of venues throughout the world as first violin of the Borodin Quartet for two decades, and of the Tokyo String Quartet for six years. He now leads the Kopelman Quartet, a string quartet in the best style and tradition of the old Russian School. During all these years, Kopelman has maintained a busy teaching schedule with professorships at Yale and Moscow Conservatory, and he has given master classes at the Guildhall and Britten-Pears Schools of Music, the Hochschule in Hamburg and in Vienna, and at numerous festivals and universities in Europe and the U.S.

Before joining the string quartet world, Kopelman was a member of the Bolshoi Theater Orchestra and was concertmaster of the Moscow Philharmonic. For over 15years Kopelman was closely associated with Sviatoslav Richter in numerous performances and recordings. He has also collaborated with Mstislav Rostropovich, Gidon Kremer, Natalia Gutman, Elisabeth Leonskaya, Alicia de Larrocha, Yuri Bashmet, Christoph Eschenbach and Emanuel Ax, among others. His recordings, which number about 40, are issued by Melodia, EMI, Virgin Classics, Teldec, Philips, Nimbus, and Wigmore Life.

Kopelman has performed in many international festivals including: Edinburgh, Hong Kong, Schleswig-Holstein, Florence, Salzburg, Tours, Moscow, Zurich, Prague Spring, Ravinia Festival, Santa Fe, Caramoor, Norfolk, Bowdoin, and the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York City.

Mikhail Kopelman has also served as a jury member of several international competitions. These have included: Evian, Beijing and ARD Munich String Quartet Competitions, as well as the Indianapolis, Enescu and Queen Elisabeth International Violin Competitions.

Born in the city of Uzhgorod in the former Soviet Union, Kopelman began his violin studies at the age of six, and later studied with Maya Glezarova and Yuri Yankelevich at the Moscow Conservatory. In 1973 he won Second Prize at the Jacques Thibaud International Competition in Paris. As a member of the Borodin Quartet, he was awarded the State Prize of the Soviet Union, and was named a People’s Artist of the Russian Federation. In 1995 he received the Royal Philharmonic Society Award and the Concertgebouw Silver Medal of Honor.

In 1993 he immigrated to the United States with his family, and in 2002, with the purpose of continuing the rich tradition of the Russian school of quartet playing, he founded the Kopelman Quartet with some of his contemporaries from the Moscow Conservatoire. He was in the same year appointed Professor of Violin at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, USA, a position he continues to hold.