The founder and leading violin teacher of the Zakhar Bron School of Music in Zurich, Liana Tretiakova, is known as one of the finest violin teachers of her generation in the world today. Having worked as a teaching assistant of the legendary Professor Bron for 15 years, Liana – also as the Professor’s alumna and his successor – continues the unique teaching methodology of one of the greatest violin teachers in music history.
World-Class Violinists Choose Liana to Teach Their Children
Thanks to her natural talent of working with children and teenagers, as well as her ability to deliver outstanding results, Liana has been chosen as a violin teacher for the children of world-class violinists, including:
- Ilya Gringolts, the famous soloist and Violin Professor at the Zurich University of the Arts
- Xiaoming Wang, a concertmaster of the Zurich Opera House and the first violin of the Stradivari Quartet
- Stefan Tarara, a concertmaster of the Zurich Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra and the Chamber Artists Orchestra, as well as the second violin of the Stradivari Quartet
- Sergey Ostrovsky, a soloist, conductor, and Violin Professor at the Geneva High School of Music
- Klaidi Sahatci, a concertmaster of the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich
- Hanna Weinmeister, a concertmaster of the Zurich Opera House
At the first lesson with Mrs. Liana Tretiakova
Sergey Ostrovsky,
I saw the reaction of my daughter and understood, that this
would probably be the only person I would trust to teach my child.
Violin Professor at the Geneva High School of Music
Violin Tuition: From the Ground Up to Esteemed Concert Halls
Having more than a quarter-century of teaching experience under her belt, Liana is equally comfortable in working with the beginners and highly advanced students, and she can guide them from the violin basics to solo performances in some of the most prestigious concert halls in Europe and Asia.
For example, in 2010 Liana began teaching Sophie Branson, a daughter of a professional violinist, when she was just four. She started from scratch, and twelve years later, in December 2022, Sophie debuted on the grand hall stage of the Tonhalle Zürich – one of the most sophisticated concert venues in the world, where such prominent violinists as David Oistrakh, Itzhak Perlman, Maxim Vengerov, Anne-Sophie Mutter and Joshua Bell have played before.
Sophie gave two sold-out concerts in one day, showcasing her brilliance through Mozart’s famous ‘Concerto in G Major’ with the Zurich Symphony Orchestra. The audience, captivated by Sophie’s violin mastery, called her for an encore six times after each concert. It was a truly remarkable day for both Sophie and her violin teacher.
iGeneration and Performance on Stage Together with Vadim Repin
Impressed by the remarkable skills exhibited by Liana’s young violin students, Swiss composer Daniel Schnyder, based in New York, crafted ‘iGeneration,’ a concerto grosso for two adult soloists (violin and cello) and two young violinists from the Zakhar Bron School of Music.
At the world premiere during Vadim Repin’s Trans-Siberian Art Festival in Novosibirsk in 2018, Sophie Branson and Ilva Eigus, Liana’s 11 and 10 year old students respectively, had a privilege to play on stage together with the Maestro Vadim Repin himself and internationally acclaimed cellist Alexander Buzlov. The performance had a big success and received a positive feedback from ‘The Strad’, the world’s most respected magazine for professional musicians:
“Sophie Branson, 11, and Ilva Eigus, 10, who study at the Zakhar Bron School of Music with Bron’s former assistant Liana Tretiakova, were two other young violinists to feature in the festival line-up. Their first appearance came alongside cellist Alexander Buzlov, the string players of the Novosibirsk Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra and Repin himself in the world premiere of iGeneration, a ‘concerto grosso for violin, cello and two young violin soloists’ by Swiss composer Daniel Schnyder. Behind the slightly glib title lay a work of surprising complexity in which Eigus and Branson were pitted against the older musicians in angular dance motifs with jagged harmony that borrowed from bebop as much as from Bartók. The second and third movements saw the girls navigate fiendishly complex polyrhythms on which the orchestra members were depending for their cues, and which were delivered with a poise that belied the scale of the challenge.”
Prize-Winners at National & International Competitions
Over the years, Liana’s violin students have won almost a hundred prizes at various Swiss national and international music competitions. At the moment of writing this (December 2023), the most significant achievements of her students on international level have included:
- 2nd prize in the junior category at the X International Violin Competition ‘Astana-Violin’ In Memory of David Oistrakh*, November 2023 (Nikita Koller, 14 years old)
- 3rd prize in the adult category at the X International Violin Competition ‘Astana-Violin’ In Memory of David Oistrakh*, November 2023 (Sophie Branson, 17 years old, the youngest contestant in the adult category)
- 2nd prize (no 1st prize this year) in the B category (born in 2008-2010) at the 14th edition of the International Arthur Grumiaux Competition for Young Violinists in Brussels*, April 2022 (Nikita Koller, 12 years old)
- 2nd prize at the 15th International Wieniawski Violin Competition in Poland, September 2021 (Ilva Eigus, 14 years old)
- 1st prize at the Nutcracker International Competition in Moscow**, December 2020 (Ilva Eigus, 14 years old)
* Won by a participant from Switzerland for the first time in the competition history.
** This prize was not only won by a Swiss contestant for the first time in the competition history, but also received a significant media coverage in Switzerland: the winner was featured on the local TV and two full-page articles on this achievement were published in two leading Swiss newspapers – ‘Blick’ and ‘Tages Anzeiger’.
Vision & Goals
As alumna and successor of Professor Bron, Liana sees her vocation in continuing the Professor’s life work – preparing the next generation of violin soloists and bringing professional violin education closer to all young violin students, everywhere.
To achieve these goals, first, together with the Professor, she founded the Zakhar Bron School of Music in her home town Zurich, in 2010, where Liana has been working since as the leading violin teacher and the school principal. The idea of creating this school was wholeheartedly supported by the legendary cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, who said in 2007:
I strongly believe that children who are taught from an early age by highly qualified teachers can achieve extraordinary success.
Mstislav Rostropovich,
Patron of the Zakhar Bron School of Music project
After the school was founded, it quickly gained recognition by some of the most famous musicians in the world, including the renowned conductor Maestro Zubin Mehta and such virtuoso violinists as Maxim Vengerov, Vadim Repin and Daniel Hope.
Apart from working at the school, Liana provides violin masterclasses in Europe and Asia, and teaches her distant students online. To make information on true professional violin education available worldwide, in late 2023 she founded the ‘Liana & Violin’ blog.