Vesko Eschkenazy was appointed principal violinist of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra on 1 January 2000. He started playing the violin at the age of five and was appointed principal violinist of the Pioneer Youth Philharmonic Orchestra four years later. He studied at the Bulgarian State Conservatory and at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London, where his teachers included Yfrah Neaman.
Eschkenazy was a prizewinner of the Wieniawski Competition in Poland in 1985 and 1988 and of the Carl Flesch Competition in London. He served successively as principal violinist with the Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra and the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra. He has performed as a soloist with many orchestras including the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the London Philharmonic Orchestra; he has worked with Yuri Bashmet, Sir Colin Davis, Carlo Maria Giulini, Kurt Masur, Seiji Ozawa, Mstislav Rostropovich and Emil Tchakarov. He has been a member of the Osiris Trio since September 2005.
Eschkenazy made his first solo appearance at the Concertgebouw in a performance of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in December 1997. He performed Szymanowski’s First Violin Concerto with the RCO in November 2000 and played first violin in Brahms’s Piano Quartet, op. 25 during the 2001 SLAVA! Festival. He performed the Khachaturian Violin Concerto with the RCO in August 2004.
Eschkenazy plays a 1738 Guarneri del Gesù specially on loan to him.
