Winner of the gold medal at the 15th edition of the P. I. Tchaikovsky International Competition (2015), the phenomenal young cellist ANDREI IONIȚA was called “one of the most exciting cellists to emerge in the last decade” by the prestigious Times of London . He was a BBC New Generation Artist from 2016-2018 and Symphoniker Hamburg artist-in-residence for the 2019-20 season.
Andrei Ioniță made his US debut in 2017, with recitals in Chicago and Washington D.C., and gave his debut recital at New York Carnegie Hall (in Zankel Hall). The previous two seasons included concerts with the Münchner Philharmoniker, Orchester symphonique de Montréal, BBC Philharmonic, Danish National Symphony, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, San Diego Symphony, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony and BBC National Orchestra of Wales; gave recitals at the Konzerthaus Berlin, Elbphilharmonie, Zurich Tonhalle, LAC Lugano and L’Auditori in Barcelona, as well as at the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Schleswig-Holstein, Verbier and Martha Argerich festivals. Andrei Ioniță’s debut album (Orchid Classics) combined a world premiere of Brett Dean with Bach and Kodály, for whom Gramophone declared “a cellist of superb skill, musical imagination and a commitment to music our time”.
Before winning the Tchaikovsky Competition, Andrei Ioniță won First Prize at the International Khachaturian Competition in June 2013; in September 2014, he won the Second Prize and the Special Prize for the performance of a commissioned composition at the ARD International Music Competition. In 2014, he received the Second Prize at the Emanuel Feuermann Grand Prix in Berlin.
Andrei Ioniță was born in 1994 in Bucharest and started taking piano lessons at the age of five, before receiving his first cello lesson three years later. He studied with Ani-Marie Paladi in Bucharest and with Jens Peter Maintz at the Universität der Künste Berlin. A beneficiary of the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben scholarship, Andrei Ioniță plays a cello made by Giovanni Battista Rogeri from Brescia in 1671.
ANDREI IONIȚĂ
