Igor Ozim is a Slovenian (Yugoslavian) violinist and
teacher born (in Ljubljana) on May 9, 1931.
(Ljubljana – formerly in Yugoslavia - is now in Slovenia and it is its
capital.) He is widely known as a violin
pedagogue rather than as a touring concert violinist, although that is how he
began his career. He started violin
lessons in his native city with Leon Pfeifer (a student of Otakar Sevcik) at
the Academy of Music at age 8. However,
by that time, he had already been studying violin for three years but with
someone I don’t know anything about. When
he was 18, after graduating from the academy, he traveled to England to study
with Albert Sammons at the Royal College of Music (commonly referred to as the
RCM.) He followed that up with two years
of study with Max Rostal, either as a private student or at the Guildhall
School of Music where Rostal was a teacher.
Ozim was now 20 years old. In
1951, he won the Carl Flesch International Violin Competition. After that, Ozim made his formal debut in
England – first in a recital at the Wigmore Hall in London and then in
Liverpool, playing the Mendelssohn e minor concerto with the Liverpool
Philharmonic. In 1953, he won another
violin competition (the ARD Competition, in Munich, in its second year of
existence. The name ARD in German is a
very long name but translates to something like “German Consortium of Public
Broadcasters.” Technically, every German
household is a member of the ARD since fees charged by and paid to the ARD are
not optional; they are mandatory.) He
was 22 years old. Ozim then embarked on
a concertizing career which eventually took him to the Far East, Australia, the
U.S., Europe, and Russia. He has
appeared with top orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic, the London
Symphony, the London Philharmonic, the Warsaw Philharmonic, and many
others. His repertory ranges from early
Baroque to contemporary and includes approximately 60 concertos. Understandably, he has premiered many works
by Slovenian composers. His recordings
are few but cover some of the standard repertoire as well as many contemporary,
modern works. He continues to tour as a much-respected
violin pedagogue, holding master classes in several countries. Ozim has held teaching posts at the Advanced
Music School in Cologne (Germany), the Advanced School of the Arts in Bern
(Switzerland), and the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria. He plays a modern violin by Andreas Hudelmayer. Ozim's most famous pupils are probably Richard
Tognetti, Sophia Herbig, and Lea Birringer. Here is a
YouTube audio file of the Mozart Rondo in C with Ozim and the Ljubljana
Symphony Orchestra.
