Philippe Graffin
violin
“The discovery of long-languishing manuscripts enabled Philippe Graffin and his collaborators to reconstruct both pieces — a true labour of love by a musician long associated with the Belgian’s music”
★★★★ The Sunday Times
” Philippe Graffin is fully committed: agile, with a lean tone which in the quieter and sweeter passages takes on a confiding intimacy that I found very persuasive. The three encores – played with a sympathetic pianist, Marisa Gupta – are delightful.”
Gramophone Magazine
Philippe Graffin
violin
BIOGRAPHY
Philippe Graffin’s inquisitive mind has often taken us beyond the confines of the repertoire, reflected in his extensive discography, making headlines with its many rediscoveries and exciting premieres. Whether commissioning a new work, unearthing a hidden manuscript version of a familiar piece, rediscovering a forgotten violin concerto, or collaborating with artists from other fields, Graffin continues to passionately expand the repertoire.
2024 saw the release of Rêves, a unique project including the world premiere recording (for AVIE) of two concertos by Ysaÿe that Graffin was instrumental in resurrecting and that he performed with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Jean-Jacques Kantorow.
Graduating from the Paris Conservatoire at 16, Philippe Graffin furthered his studies with Joseph Gingold at Indiana University, Bloomington, as well as with Miriam Fried and Philippe Hirschhorn in Holland. Upon hearing him play at the Kreisler competition in Austria, Yehudi Menuhin invited Graffin to make his debut recording under his baton with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
Since then, Graffin has performed on over five continents – from the BBC Proms in London to the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, in Tokyo and Johannesburg, with the St Petersburg Philharmonic and Gothenburg Symphony, and with some of the emblematic musical figures of our time.
In 2003, he replaced, at short notice, the soloist to perform Rodion Shchedrin’s Concerto Cantabile, with Mstislav Rostropovich conducting. This led to Shchedrin writing another Concerto for Graffin, Concerto Parlando.
Graffin has premiered works by composers such as Vytautas Barkauskas, Yves Prin, David Matthews, Peter Fribbins, Philippe Hersant, Nicola Campogrande and Marcelo Nisinman. In 2014, he gave the French premiere of Corigliano’s The Red Violin Concerto at the Salle Pleyel. Long before it became fashionable, Graffin rediscovered Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Violin Concerto, which he made the first recording of in South Africa, and subsequently performed at the BBC Proms.
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Philippe Graffin has since recorded many concertos by British composers, culminating with the Britten and Elgar concertos, the latter in its pre-Kreisler version which was hailed by critics. BBC Record Review (2022) chose it among their three favourite recordings ever made. Subsequently, he gave the centennial performance of the Elgar at the Three Choirs Festival, with the Philharmonia Orchestra and Sir Roger Norrington.
Graffin founded the Festival Consonances in St. Nazaire, which he directed for 25 years. He brought this festival to Wigmore Hall in London for a week-long event devoted to the influence of Ysaÿe, and to The Hague with the Residentie Orchestra. He also founded “Ysaÿe’s Knokke” in 2017 in the Belgian seaside resort where the composer spent his summers. In 2019, Graffin created “Traces” in Brussels, a festival devoted to the promotion of neglected works, especially from composers whose lives were crushed during the Holocaust.
In a quest to bring his music to a broader audience, in 2014 Philippe Graffin created a special project mixing poetry and music around the actor Gerard Depardieu, for concerts at Flagey, Brussels which were broadcast on Belgian television and featured in a documentary. He also wrote a musical tale for children The Hidden Fairy for the actress Marie-Christine Barrault, which they performed together at Wigmore Hall.
Graffin is featured in several TV broadcasts including “Delius: Composer, Lover, Enigma” for the BBC, “À la recherche de la sonate de Vinteuil” for Arte, “Ysaÿe Is Not Dead” for RTBF 2019, “Ysaÿe’s Secret Concerto” (available on YouTube) and “The Last Musician of Auschwitz” (BBC, 2025). In 2018, he premiered, completed and published a 7th Ysaÿe Solo Sonata. This major discovery is featured on the album Fiddlers Blues, and in the 2020 film “Ysaÿe’s Secret Sonata”.
Philippe Graffin has made four recordings of Chausson’s Poeme, each in a different version: the first with Lord Menuhin conducting, then the premiere of an original manuscript arrangement for violin, string quartet and piano. Later, another version with orchestra with 14 original different bars never heard before, with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and Vernon Handley, and lately for a film with the Karski String Quartet.
Highlights of Graffin’s 25/26 season include the release of his latest recording (Lalo and Bruch with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Lithuanian National Philharmonic, conducted by Robertas Servenikas), concerts at the Nagareyama and Schiermonnikoog festivals, recitals in Brussels and Liège, and two new studio projects (a double album featuring the chamber music of Arnold Schoenberg and friends, and a recital disc of music by Les Six).
Philippe Graffin plays on a violin attributed to Domenico Busano, Venice, 1730. He teaches at the Conservatoire de Paris (CNSM) and at Brussels’s Royal Conservatory (KCB).
Sept 2026
Phillippe Graffin is represented worldwide by LoganArts Management Ltd.
For more information, please contact Andrew Logan, Director
+44 (0) 7841 582 851 | info@loganartsmanagement.com
More also at www.philippegraffinviolinist.com
Philippe Graffin
PRESS
“The discovery of long-languishing manuscripts enabled Philippe Graffin and his collaborators to reconstruct both pieces — a true labour of love by a musician long associated with the Belgian’s music”
★★★★ The Sunday Times
” Philippe Graffin is fully committed: agile, with a lean tone which in the quieter and sweeter passages takes on a confiding intimacy that I found very persuasive. The three encores – played with a sympathetic pianist, Marisa Gupta – are delightful.”
Gramophone Magazine
“Both works are dark and virtuosic, his fragile yet defiant instrument soaring above brooding orchestral forces”
★★★★ BBC Music Magazine
“Graffin’s performance is most distinguished. I cannot remember one on disc that so magically exploits the range of pianissimo that the score asks for. This is not a barnstorming performance, as so many are with this massive work, but one which in total concentration brings out to the full the tenderness and poetry, not just in the central slow movement but in the other movements too, not least in the accompanied cadenza which is yearningly beautiful.
The story is similar with the first version of Chausson’s Poème… Here again the performance could hardly be more subtle, with Graffin maintaining the gentlest of dynamics while keeping total concentration”
Gramophone, editor’ s choice
‘Rare’ is doubly true: the quality of the playing here deserves that adjective… Such a combination of enterprise‚ imagination and responsive musicianship is rare indeed.”
Gramophone Magazine
There is much to enjoy in these glowing recording premieres: the spacious orchestration, the subtleties of Graffin’s expressiveness, the thrilling interplay between him and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Jean-Jacques Kantorow.
And then there is the music itself. Poème concertant is passionate but somber and follows an erratic path between dream, torment and ecstasy. The Violin Concerto is a more conventional 19th-century piece with a subdued, almost diffused middle section. The exuberant corner movements showcase Graffin’s mastery of timbre shifts and his poetic virtuosity
De Volkskrant, Holland
Dive Deeper into Philippe Graffin
Eugène Ysaÿe
Time and again, violinists have dreamt of a concerto by Ysaÿe.
What would it have sounded like ?
Could it have resembled the concertos of his mentors, Vieuxtemps or Wieniawski. Or maybe Chausson’s Poème, or even the Nocturnes that Debussy had promised him?
When my friend, the musicologist Xavier Falques, let me know that he was studying the manuscript of a complete unpublished concerto by Ysaÿe, I eagerly expressed my curiosity. Upon the first read through of this concerto (which eventually became the Poème concertant, I was struck by the dramatic and passionate atmosphere of the work. its ambition and stylistic freedom. I also recognized some of the instrumental innovations that Ysaÿe would later develop in his solo violin sonatas. How had this work remained unpublished until now?
So, I was only halfway surprised to discover the source of his inspiration. We will never know if the genesis of the poem sealed its destiny, but regardless, beyond the possibly anecdotal aspect, the music stands on its own. Debussy’s famous phrase comes to mind, which he wrote upon listening to his friend Chausson’s “poem” after his death: “Nothing is more touching in dreamy sweetness than the end, when the music, leaving aside all description, all anecdote, becomes the very feeling that inspires its emotion. These are very rare moments in an artist’s work.”
Xavier had already worked on the first movements of Ysaÿe’s youthful concertos. When I learned that there existed a complete orchestrated second movement and a final movement in manuscript form for violin and piano, it seemed that we should try to give these works the sound of the orchestra for which they were intended. I couldn’t imagine a better expert in Ysaÿe’s orchestration than Xavier. He took on the challenge and also advised the composer Érika Vega in orchestrating the Poème Concertant.
Working on this project gave me the feeling of a journey through time.
Philippe Graffin
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