Maxim Rysanov

Violist Maxim Rysanov, who has spent much of his career in Britain, is one of the world's preeminent players of his instrument. When famed Russian violist Yuri Bashmet heard Rysanov play, he is said to have remarked, "My rival has arrived!" Rysanov also pursues a parallel career as a conductor. Rysanov was born in Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union, in 1978. He was sent to the Central Special Music School in Moscow, where he studied with Maria Sitkovskaya, and then took advantage of Russia's opening to the West in the 1990s and enrolled at the Guildh...