Narek Hakhnazaryan

Since winning the Cello First Prize and Gold Medal at the XIV International Tchaikovsky Competition in 2011 at the age of 22, Narek Hakhnazaryan has performed with major orchestras across the globe and has established himself internationally as one of the finest cellists of his generation. Hakhnazaryan has earned critical acclaim worldwide, with the Strad describing him as “dazzlingly brilliant” and the Washington Post hailing him “a seasoned phenomenon”. In 2014 he was named a BBC New Generation Artist and in August 2016 he made his highly distinguished and critically acclaimed BBC Proms debut.

Highlights of Hakhnazaryan’s 2016/17 season include debuts with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, Utah Symphony, Berlin Konzerthaus, Netherlands Philharmonic, Teatro Dell’Opera (Rome), Munich Chamber and Essen Philharmonic orchestras. He returns to the Kansas City and New Zealand Symphony Orchestras, BBC Philharmonic, Orchestre della Toscana and to the Warsaw Easter Festival. In recital, Hakhnazaryan performs in cities such as London, Lugano and Eindhoven and in Summer 2017 he tours Southeast Asia with concerts in Taipei, Seoul, Kyoto and Tokyo.

Hakhnazaryan has performed concertos with the Detroit, Chicago, Seattle, Milwaukee, Toronto, London, Sydney and NHK Symphony Orchestras, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Aspen Music Festival Orchestra, the Rotterdam, Czech, and Seoul Philharmonics, the Frankfurt Radio Orchestra and l’Orchestre de Paris, among others. He has appeared with conductors such as Gergiev, Guerrero, Hrůša, Koopman, Neemi Järvi, Pletnev, Slatkin, Sokhiev, Robertson, and Bělohlávek. In 2015 he made a hugely successful debut with the LA Philharmonic and Lionel Bringuier at the Hollywood Bowl and toured Spain with the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne and Jukka-Pekka Saraste in the same year.

An eager chamber musician and recitalist, Hakhnazaryan has performed in New York’s Carnegie Hall, Boston’s Jordan Hall at New England Conservatory, Chicago’s Harris Theatre, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Salle Pleyel Paris, Wigmore Hall, Berlin Konzerthaus, Vienna Konzerthaus, Oji Hall Tokyo, Shanghai Concert Hall, and esteemed festivals such as Ravinia, Aspen, Piatigorsky, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Beethovenfest Bonn, Mikkeli, Pau Casals, Lucerne and Verbier Festivals amongst many others.

Hakhnazaryan has received scholarships from the Rostropovich Foundation and the Russian Performing Arts Fund, and his prizes include First Prize in the 2006 Aram Khachaturian International Competition in Armenia and First Place in the 2006 Johansen International Competition for Young String Players. As First Prize winner in the 2008 Young Concert Artists International Auditions, Hakhnazaryan made his debut at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall and in Washington, DC.

Narek Hakhnazaryan was born in Yerevan, Armenia, into a family of musicians: his father is a violinist and his mother a pianist. Mentored by the late Rostropovich, Hakhnazaryan received an Artist Diploma from the New England Conservatory of Music in 2011 where he studied with Lawrence Lesser. Prior to this he studied at the Moscow Conservatory with Alexey Seleznyov and at the Sayat-Nova School of Music in Yerevan with Zareh Sarkisyan.