Violinist Viktoria Mullova, born in 1959, was one of the last artists to leave the Soviet Union for the Western world. Exiled to Sweden from 1983, this brilliant student of the Moscow Conservatory, whose teacher was Leonid Kogan, had just been awarded the Gold Medal at the Tchaikovsky Competition (1982), after winning First Prize at the Sibelius Competition in 1980. His career continued in the USA, with a contract with the Philips label recording works by Tchaikovsky, Vivaldi, Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Brahms, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Bartok and Bach, from 1986 to 2003. Viktoria Mullova's reputation as a soloist and member of her chamber music ensemble is further enhanced by her recitals and numerous collaborations. In 1995, she won the ECHO Award for her recording of the Brahms Violin Concerto . Married to cellist Matthew Barley, with whom she recorded the jazz and rock recital Through the Looking Glass (2000), Viktoria Mullova plays a 1723 Stradivarius for her recordings, which are regularly acclaimed by the critics, as is the case of the Prokofiev program released in 2015.
