He studied first at the Central Music School of the Moscow Conservatory with Professors Yankeievitz, Glezarova and Andrievsky, very quickly playing as a soloist all over the Soviet Union with its leading national orchestras whilst he was a student, and in 1973 won first prize in the Soviet Union’s National Competition for Violinists. Boris Belkin played in Moscow at the inaugural 1st Rostropovich Festival in 2011 with Temirkanov and the St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra. He emigrated to the west in 1974 and since regularly worked with conductors like Bernstein, Ashkenazy, Mehta, Maazel, Muti, Ozawa, Kurt Sanderling, Temirkanov, Dohnányi, Dutoit, Gelmetti, Herbig, Tennstedt, Rattle, Haitink, Berglund, Mata, Chung, Hirokami, Fedoseyev, Ahronovitch, Welser-Most, Lazalev, Simonov, Gelmetti and Kogan, alongside many others, performing with the world’s leading orchestras including the Boston Symphony, Cleveland, Berlin Philharmonic, Israel Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh Symphony, Montreal Symphony, Bayerischer Rundfunk, Royal Concertgebouw and the major British Orchestras. Boris Belkin has regularly returned to the Miyazaki Festival since he was first asked by Isaac Stern to perform with him at it in 1997 and he plays chamber music with artists such as Yuri Bashmet, Mischa Maisky, Georges Pludermacher, and many others. Season ‘12/13 includes several concerts in Paris, Moscow and Spain with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic and Yuri Temirkanov, and tours to South America and Spain with the Moscow Philharmonic.
Boris Belkin has featured in several television productions which include a film on Jean Sibelius (performing the Concerto with the Swedish Radio Orchestra and Vladimir Ashkenazy), with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic playing the Tchaikovsky Concerto, with Bernstein and the Orchestra National de France playing Ravel’s Tzigane and with Bernard Haitink and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Mozart and Paganini’s Concerto No.1.
Boris Belkin’s first recording, Paganini’s 1st Violin Concerto, was with the Israel Philharmonic and Zubin Mehta and was extremely highly praised. His other discs for Decca include the Tchaikovsky and Sibelius Concertos with The Philharmonia and Ashkenazy, Richard Strauss’s Concerto with Berlin Radio and Ashkenazy, Prokofiev’s Concertos No.1 and No.2 with the London Philharmonic under Kondrashin and Barshai and the Brahms Concerto with the LSO and Fischer. For Denon he has recorded the Prokofiev Concertos with the Zurich Tonhalle and Michael Stern, the concertos by Sibelius, Bruch and Glazunov plus Shostakovich’s 1st Concerto with the Royal Philharmonic and Junichi Hirokami, Tchaikovsky’s Concerto with the London Philharmonic conducted by Michael Stern, Mozart’s Concerto in A major K219 and Sinfonia Concertante with the Salzburg Chamber Soloists and Brahms’ Sonatas with Michel Dalberto.
Boris Belkin has held master classes in Siena, Italy, at the famed Accademia Chigiana, since 1985.