About

Oleh is an excellent violinist. He is one of few, who truly plays with his heart.

Euhen Stankovich, Chief of Ukrainian National Union of Composers

Oleh Kurochkin

Award winning classical violinist based in Berlin

Principal violinist of Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, alumnus of Karajan-Akademie der Berliner Philharmoniker, international competitions prizewinner, orchestra concertmaster and passionate chamber musician.

As a soloist Oleh has performed in over 20 countries across Europe and has appeared with internationally renowned symphony and chamber orchestras.

Among Oleh’s chamber music partners were such musicians as Renaud Capuçon, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Claudio Bohorquez, Alexander Hülshoff, Pedro Halffter, Valery Sokolov, Tomáš Jamník, Martin Stadtfeld, Evgueni Sinaiski, Scharoun Ensemble, and others.

Born in Yevpatoria (Ukraine), in a family of musicians, he received his first violin lessons at the age of 5. Since 2006 he studied at the Kyiv Mykola Lysenko specialized secondary boarding school, in the class of Yaroslava Rivnyak. In 2012 he continued his studies at the National Tchaikovsky Music Academy of Ukraine.
From 2014 he studied at the Robert Schuman High School of Music in Dusseldorf, in the class of Ida Bieler. In 2020, he received a Solo Master’s degree from the Folkwang Universität der Künste (Essen, Germany) in Boris Garlitsky’s class. Now Oleh is continuing his studies at Folkwang University’s “Konzertexamen” Programm.

Oleh is the winner of many national and international competitions, including the Eugen Coca International Competition, the Evgen Stankovych International Competition, the Ignatius Jan Paderevsky Chamber Ensemble Competition and others. In 2018, Oleh became a finalist and a winner of the Guillaume Prize Award at the Eugene Ysaye International Violin Competition in Belgium.

Oleh received a scholarship from the President of Ukraine, a German state scholarship, DAAD-Preis, scholarships from the Lions Club, Villa Musica, Yehudi Menuhin Foundation and Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie. VERE Music Fund is supporting Oleh by providing a grant. In 2022 Oleh got the annual  “Musik:Landschaft Westfallen Festival Award”

As a soloist he has performed in the halls of Belgium, Bulgaria, Italy, Moldova, Germany, Hungary, Ukraine, France and the Czech Republic. As an guest concertmaster, he toured with the Klassische Philharmonie Bonn, Sofia Philharmoniker, Zermatt Festival, Schleswig-Holstein Festival etc. In recent years Oleh had a privilege to work alongside such conductors as Kirill Petrenko, Daniel Barenboim, Simon Rattle, Zubin Mehta, Andris Nelsons, Herbert Blomstedt, John Williams, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Gustavo Dudamel usw.

In 2019-2020 Oleh was a member of the Staatskapelle Berlin Academy, a Deutsche Staatsoper orchestra. In October 2020, after a succesfull audition Oleh got a position at the Karajan-Academy of Berliner Philharmoniker.

Oleh plays the Michele Deconet “ex-Castelberg” violin from 1775 (Venice), thanks to the generous loan of “Martha von Castelberg” Foundation.

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