Acclaimed for her “mysterious and captivating charisma” (American Record Guide) and her “captivating fantasy and freshness” (The Strad), and named a BBC Magazine “Rising Star,” Maya Levy is the 2023 Caecilia Prize Artist of the Year. She is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards, including first prize at the 2020 Public Francophone Media Awards, a silver medal at the Manhattan International Music Competition, the “Supernova” prize at the Klara Festival, and the title of laureate of the 2018 Karol Szymanowski Competition and the 2019 Karol Lipinski International Violin Competition, where she won the “Beethoven Prize” for the best interpretation of the sonata.
In 2021, she performed at the farewell concert of German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels.
She has collaborated with numerous renowned conductors and orchestras, including the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Podlaska Opera and Philharmonic, the Szczecin Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, the Julia Carbonell Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Chamber Orchestra of Wallonia, the Torun Symphony Orchestra, and the Mitteldeutsche Kammerphilharmonie. She has performed in venues such as the Konzerthaus in Berlin, the NOSPR Concert Hall in Poland, the Szczecin Philharmonic Hall, the Eric Granados Municipal Auditorium in Spain, Studio 4 at Flagey in Brussels, the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, De Bijloke in Ghent, the Royal Theater of La Monnaie, the Philharmonie de Liège, the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, and the Recanati Concert Hall in Tel Aviv. etc…
Maya is a regular at festivals such as Les Sommets Musicaux de Gstaad (Switzerland), the Christophori Piano Salon (Germany), the Mozartianna Festival in Gdansk (Poland), the Festival de l’été mosan, the Klarafestival, and the Musiq’3 Festival, where she has appeared with artists such as Rolando Villazón, Julien Quentin, Boris Kusnezow, Alexander Mogelevsky, Marius Smolij, Rune Bergmann, Andrei Gridchuk, Omar Massa, and others.
She closes the 2023-2024 season with a tour in China and concerts across Europe, and we will have the pleasure of hearing her again on several new CDs to be released throughout 2025. Spain, France, Belgium, Israel, Italy, and the Netherlands are among the countries where you can see her on stage in the coming months.
Maya is also an accomplished chamber musician who formed a duo with pianist Matthieu Idmtal for seven years and has been a member of the “Trio Carlo Van Neste” since 2014 (with Karin Lechner and Alexandre Debrus). These two ensembles have produced two CDs.
In 2014, the highly acclaimed recording of Mendelssohn’s complete piano trios was released on the Pavane Records label. In 2017, her second CD was released, featuring the complete sonatas for violin and piano by Edvard Grieg with pianist Matthieu Idmtal, also on Pavane Records.
The CD was praised and awarded by Classica magazine, La Libre Belgique, and included in Klara’s top 10, and was described as “The most intoxicating recording of a lesser-known Grieg” by The Strad Magazine.
In 2021, her CD titled “The Lockdown” was released on Rubicon Classics Ltd. In London, she dedicated a program to Piazzolla (complete tangos for solo violin, a world premiere) and Prokofiev’s Sonata for Two Violins, with violinist Hrachya Avanesyan.
Maya taught for eight years in music schools across Europe and gave masterclasses at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (Israel), the Lleida Conservatory (Spain), the Copenhagen Conservatory (Denmark), Paris (France, AGBU), Geneva (Switzerland, AGBU), Yerevan (Armenia, AGBU), the Palermo Classica Festival (Italy), the Seoul Conservatory (South Korea), and the Lanzhou Conservatory (China).
Born in 1997 to French and Belgian parents, Maya Levy began playing the violin at the age of four under the tutelage of Bernadette Jansen.
Later, she continued her studies with Igor Tkatchouk and, since 2013, has been working with the eminent Russian pedagogue Boris Kuschnir in Vienna.
In the meantime, she has participated in masterclasses with numerous renowned teachers, including Augustin Dumay, Pavel Vernikov, Itamar Golan, Renaud Capuçon, Miriam Fried, Andrei Baranov, Sergey Khachatryan, and Leonidas Kavakos.
Maya Levy plays a 1702 Guarneri (Cremona) violin.