Baiba Skride

Baiba Skride’s natural approach to music-making has endeared her to many of today’s most prestigious conductors and orchestras worldwide. She performs regularly with orchestras such as the Berliner Philharmoniker, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Concertgebouworkest, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Orchestre de Paris, London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, Oslo Philharmonic, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and NHK Symphony Orchestra. She enjoys close collaborations with notable conductors such as Marin Alsop, Christoph Eschenbach, Edward Gardner, Susanna Mälkki, Andris Nelsons, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Andrés Orozco-Estrada, Santtu-Matias Rouvali, Dima Slobodeniouk, John Storgårds, Juraj Valčuha, and Kazuki Yamada.

Highlights of the 2023-24 season included her return to the Berliner Philharmoniker with Andris Nelsons for a performance of Gubaidulina’s Ich und Du, and to the Münchner Philharmoniker for the Berg violin concerto. She also returned to the New York Philharmonic with Santtu-Matias Rouvali, and to the Oregon Symphony with Kristiina Poska.

Skride is an internationally sought-after chamber musician and performs regularly in a duo with her sister Lauma Skride. She is one of the founding members of the Skride Quartet, which has performed at venues such as the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Musikverein in Vienna, Wigmore Hall in London, and the Louvre in Paris, plus tours in North America and Australia.

Skride’s latest album “Violin Unlimited” was released in May 2022. Her prolific discography includes all Mozart concertos with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra and the Bartók concerto with the WDR Sinfonieorchester, both conducted by Eivind Aadland; as well as an American recording featuring concertos by Bernstein, Korngold, and Rózsa with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra and Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Santtu-Matias Rouvali; and the debut recording of the Skride Quartet, all under the Orfeo label.

In the 2022-23 season, Skride completed her recordings of both Shostakovich violin concertos for Deutsche Grammophon with Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Skride was born into a musical Latvian family in Riga and continued her studies in 1995 with Petru Munteanu at the Rostock University of Music and Theatre. In 2001, she won first prize in the Queen Elisabeth Competition. She plays the Yfrah Neaman Stradivarius, kindly on loan by the Neaman family through the Beare’s International Violin Society.