Acclaimed as one of the most prominent violinists of our time, Philippe Graffin was discovered by Yehudi Menuhin, who, after hearing him at the Fritz Kreisler Competition in Austria, invited him to make his debut recording with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

His singular international career has taken him across five continents and reflects a lifelong artistic curiosity, particularly evident in his extensive and acclaimed discography, which ranges from Mozart to works especially composed for him. He has recorded over thirty concertos, including Saint-Saëns, the rediscovered Fauré Concerto, original and forgotten versions of Chausson’s Poème, Elgar’s Concerto, and Ravel’s Tzigane, as well as concertos by Britten, Dvořák, and Coleridge-Taylor. His discography also includes concertos by Rodion Shchedrin and Vytautas Barkauskas.

As a soloist, he has performed with orchestras such as the Philharmonia, BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, English Chamber Orchestra, Saarbrücken Philharmonie, Residentie Orkest, Gothenburg Symphony, Czech Philharmonic, Orchestra di Padova e del Veneto, and the St. Petersburg Philharmonic. He has performed at venues including the Lincoln Center in New York, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Wigmore Hall and the Royal Albert Hall in London, the Palazzetto Bru Zane, and the Maison de la Radio et de la Musique in Paris, and has toured extensively across Europe, the United States, South Africa, Asia, and Australia.

Philippe Graffin is passionately dedicated to the music of our time, including that of composers such as Dutilleux and Saariaho. Several composers have written works for him, including Vytautas Barkauskas, Philippe Hersant, David Matthews, Yves Prin, Rodion Shchedrin, Peter Fribbins, and Marcelo Nisinman.

In 2014, he created a project for Belgian television with Gérard Depardieu at Flagey in Brussels, which brought together poetry and music and would later inspire the documentary Graffin-Depardieu, la nuit leur appartient.

A student of Philippe Hirschhorn and Josef Gingold — the latter, in turn, a disciple of Eugène Ysaÿe —, Graffin maintains a particularly profound relationship with the work of the great Belgian violinist and composer.

For 25 years, Philippe Graffin was the Artistic Director of the Consonances chamber music festival in Saint-Nazaire, France.

In tandem with his intensive artistic career, Philippe Graffin is a Professor of Violin at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels and the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris.