"The word "Escape"Which comes from Italian, but which has the root in the Latin language, means"run away, run away"Or"sudden departure". After the seventeenth century, this word gives its name to a musical form in which voices imitate one another in an irregular way ...
In my life, this escape is linked to an event that totally changed me: my departure and that of my parents from Albania, a behavior that in those days was the fugitives of the people and of the homeland, with punitive consequences and inevitable for the families left in Albania ... "
Interview with Tedi Papavrami
With these words begins the autobiographical book of the great violinist internationally renowned, Tedi Papavrami of which today we write this piece with affection on his birthday.
Tedi Papavrami, together with his parents, Robert and Jolanda, two parents who with great sacrifices and a lot of firmness and tenacity, did everything to offer their child the possibility of a better future, the three breaking their most severe rules with their escape dictatorships of Albania in the 1986 and they do it for the love of music, the love of a bow of the violin that in the hand of Tedi, one can say, sang.
Tedi Papavrami was born in Tirana, the 13 May of 1971 and is a prodigy son of a violinist father. The first encounter with music and with the violin took place at the age of four. His teacher was his father, Robert Papavrami, who greatly influenced his artistic career. At the age of 11, he performed at the Palace of Theater and Ballet in Tirana with Paganini's First Concert.
The Circolo degli Artisti immediately warned that Papavrami was an absolute talent and his family realized that he was isolated in a cage in Albania under dictatorship.
Fortunately for him, thanks to the flutist Alain Marion who was in Tirana in the 80 years and who immediately noticed the talented boy, the French government was convinced that he offered him a scholarship to study in France. From that moment the doors were opened for the great violinist.
In the 1986 he won the first prize of the CNDMP Conservatory. His musical career is formed and takes wings thanks to his professors Zino Francescatti and Viktoria Mullova. In the 1993 he won the First Prize of the Sarasate Competition in Pamplona, in addition to the Special Audience Award.
Tedi Papavrami builds his career thanks to a constant and disciplined commitment, supported by the love and sacrifices of his family that followed him in France, to realize his dream and not only.
In his dream the dreams of the medical grandfather who had studied in Austria were also enclosed, but whose studies had been interrupted by the communist Hoxha regime. At the same time, they included those of themselves, who wanted a life free from the stringent chains of the dictatorship.
Tedi Papavrami performs throughout Europe, in Turkey, Japan and Israel, in South Africa, in America and accompanied by famous orchestras, by the Philharmonic of Germany, Paris, Bologna, Monte Carlo and many others.
Among the distinguished directors with whom he worked we can remember: Kurt Sanderling, Christopher Hogwood and many others.
T.Papavrami performs extraordinarily in chamber music and his favorite partners are Philippe Bianconi, Huseyin Sermet, Paul Meyer, Rphael Oleg, Xavier Phillips and Frančois-Fredéric Guy.
Tedi Papavrami does not only excel as a violinist. He is a complete artist. It is also recognized as a thick translator. After the death of the great translator Jusuf Vrioni, (one of the great experts of the French language), he became the official translator for the French language of the works of the Albanian writer, Ismail Kadare.
Furthermore, he plays the main character in the provincial Chronicle in the movie "Chronicle of the provincial" in the 2009 as an actor.
Papavrami now lives in Geneva, Switzerland and works as a violin professor at the Geneva Music School from the 2008.
In April of the 2013 his autobiographical history comes out in French Fugue pour violon seul (ROMAN) (French Edition) (Escape for violin only), of the publisher Robert Laffont, in which he tells us about his journey in search of identity both as a man and as a musician.
From his book, he also inspired a documentary film “Ostinato"Which tells the life of a violinist but also of a man, as a personality that seeks its place in the world.
"Ostinato": a documentary film on Tedi Papavrami
Tedi Papavrami is one of the greatest illustrious violinists in the world, and despite this, he never forgets his roots.
He often returns to his Tirana and there are also concerts that have found the warmth of the applause and the admiration of his people.
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