It is 12 years since violinist Andrey Baranov charmed the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra musicians and audiences, writes PETA STEWART. His performance with the CPO and Thomas Sanderling on 12 June, 2025, is highly anticipated.
Baranov’s huge fan base has, however, not had to wait for 12 years, because he has performed on other platforms like Cape Town Concert Series and the Stellenbosch International Chamber Music Festival (he is performing for both again on this South African tour). Scheduling engagements is one of the trickiest aspects of symphony seasons and the availability of dates for both CPO and Baranov just never coincided. Until now.
Quite sensational
Says Louis Heyneman, CEO and Artistic Director of the CPO, “Baranov’s previous appearances with the CPO in 2011 and 2013 were sensational. His engaging and committed performance and the tension in every note he played had our audiences on the edges of their seats.”
Baranov is playing the Brahms Violin Concerto, a work he says is, in the minds of most musicians, THE violin concerto, not that Beethoven and others are not great, he hastens to add. “This is the work of a genius. It’s the most difficult, the most complex and unlike others where the violin is always on top with the orchestra as accompaniment, in this one there’s a lot of fighting between the orchestra and solo violin and the demands for supremacy. I have played it several times this season and I can’t wait to perform it again.”
First generation musicians
His parents – his father is a violinist, his mother a pianist – were first generation musicians and they gave their children every encouragement to become musicians. His sister, Maria Baranova, became a pianist and they toured South Africa together. There were always duets in the home, performing as a duo when she was just nine. He started violin lessons when he was five.
Andrey is the 1st violin of the David Oistrakh Quartet which he established in 2012, an internationally acclaimed quartet, performances with which used to take up exactly half of his career – the other half was spent in solo or orchestra performances. Then Covid hit and there was less work. What made it worse was that as the world was recovering from Covid Russia invaded Ukraine and his colleagues, based in Russia, found that logistics and politics made it harder for international invitations.
Although Andrey moved to Lausanne 20 years ago – he lives there with his wife, violinist Anna Vasileva and their four children – he has had to deal with the crisis that is the war but fortunately his career is now back where it was in terms of engagements. And this, he says, has its own challenges.
“Before Covid I could not devote as much time to my family as I wanted to. During Covid, all changed and I could spend much more time with them. Now, with more and more engagements threatening to take me away so much, I have to create a balance so that I neglect neither. ” One can also add recordings to his schedule – the interviewer caught him on the train from Italy to Switzerland and completed the interview just before he went into recordings of two Dvorak Piano Quartets with Swiss musicians in Lausanne.
Baranov performances
Luckily for South Africa, he hasn’t had to cut his engagements yet and after his CPO recital on 12 June he will perform with the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra on 19 June, come back to Cape Town to give a recital with pianist Andrey Gugnin on 21 June in Syzmanovski, Shostakovich ad Strauss at 11am at the Baxter Concert Hall, for the Cape Town Concert Series, perform in Knysna on 23 June, with Nina Schumann at the Johannesburg Music Society on 29 June, and then on 4 July join the Stellenbosch International Chamber Music Festival, where Anna is also again a guest artist. In this festival, there he will play concerts with one, two violins or three violins and one in an arrangement of AC/DC’s Thunderstruck for three violins and three celli.
For Nina Schumann, Baranov is the epitome of a good musician. He has the emotion, the tension, gives generously and nails every performance, she says.
He has won many important competition such as the Queen Elisabeth in 2012 the Benjamin Britten and Henri Marteau International Violin Competitions, and has been a top prizewinner of more than twenty others and since his concert debut in 2005 with the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic and Vassily Petrenko, he has performed with the major European, American and Asian Orchestras. Chamber music partners include Martha Argerich, Pierre Amoyal, whose teaching assistant he was once, the late Alexander Buzlov, Andrey Gugnin and Kirill Gerstein. He has also released “The Golden Violin”, featuring romantic violin pieces, which won the Diapason d’Or in 2018.
So what does he want to achieve? A balance in his life and the chance to climb Table Mountain!
What: Symphony concert with the CPO, recital with the Cape Town Concert Series, concerts in the Stellenbosch International Chamber Music Festival
Who: Violinist Andrey Baranov
When: June 12, 21 and July 3 onwards
Information and tickets: CPO, Cape Town Concert Series, Stellenbosch International Chamber Music Festival
WS
