violin soloist

Bohdan Luts

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Bohdan Luts Awarded First Prize at the 17th Henryk Wieniawski International Violin Competition

On 22 October 2026, the jury of the 17th Henryk Wieniawski International Violin Competition in Poznań announced Bohdan Luts as the winner of First Prize. The jury, chaired by Bartłomiej Nizioł, awarded Second Prize to Jinzhu Li and Third Prize to SooBeen Lee. Jooha Choi, Anna Im and Meng Zou were also named laureates.

Founded in 1935, the Wieniawski Competition is one of the oldest violin competitions in the world. This edition opened on 8 October and brought together 50 violinists selected through preliminary auditions. Over two weeks, they played through rounds devoted to Wieniawski, to Polish and international repertoire, and to concertos with orchestra.

Bohdan's programme ranged from Wieniawski's virtuoso works to Andrzej Panufnik's Violin Concerto and Antonín Dvořák's Violin Concerto in A minor. In the final, he performed Wieniawski's Violin Concerto No. 2 in D minor, Op. 22, with the Poznań Philharmonic Orchestra under Łukasz Borowicz.

What the prize brings

First Prize carries an award of €60,000. It also includes a two-year loan of the 1711 "Marquis de Rivière" Antonio Stradivari violin, made possible by Nippon Violin. The prize is accompanied by a concert tour that begins in Poland and continues across Europe and beyond.

A Musical Journey

Bohdan Luts was born in Lviv in 2004. He studied at the Kyiv State Music Lyceum in the class of Professor Olga Korinets and at the Lviv State Music Lyceum in the class of Professors Maria Futorska and Oksana Tsap. He also was a student at the International Menuhin Music Academy in Switzerland in the class of Professor Oleg Kaskiv, Guillaume Chilemme and Renaud Capuçon, and regularly participated in master classes of famous musicians and teachers such as Gabor Takacz-Nagy, Pinchas Zukerman, Rainer Honeck, Liviu Prunaru, Pablo de Naverán, Ivan Vukčević and others. Currently, Bohdan is studying at the Music and Arts University of the City of Vienna in the class of Professor Boris Kuschnir.

The greatest success of Bohdan came in 2023, when, at the age of 18, he won the First Prize at the prestigious Long-Thibaud International Violin Competition, as well as the Audience Prize, Press Jury Prize, and French Republican Guard Orchestra Prize.
Previously, in 2022, at the age of 17, he also won the First Prize at the renowned Carl Nielsen International Competition in Denmark. That same year, he won the First Prize and the Audience Award at the 2nd Alberto Lysy International Violin Competition in Gstaad.

He has played concerts in countries such as Ukraine, Denmark, Monaco, Finland, Argentina, France, Slovakia, Poland, Latvia, Italy,

Switzerland and participated in International Festivals and concerts such as the Gstaad Menuhin Festival (Switzerland), Bellerive Music Festival (Switzerland), Helsinki Seriös (Finland), “Le Concert de Paris” 2025, Le Festival Radio France Montpellier Occitanie (France), Nohant Festival Chopin (France), Incontri In Terra Di Sienna Festival (Italy), Festival Soeurs Jumelles (France) and others. He performed as a soloist with the Copenhagen Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Philarmonique de Monte-Carlo, Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, Odense Symphony Orchestra, Sinfonieorchester St. Gallen, Orchestre Royal de Chambre de Wallonie, Košice Symphony Orchestra, Latvian National Symphony Orchestra, Lviv National Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, the INSO-Lviv Symphony Orchestra and others. He played with such conductors as Michel Plasson, Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider, Kazuki Yamada, Marie Jacquot, Anna-Maria Helsing, Anna Skryleva, Aivis Greters, Taras Krysa, Yaroslav Shemet, Vahan Mardirossian, Jurek Dybal and others.

Currently, Bohdan is an Associate artist of the Productions Internationales Albert Sarfati in France. Bohdan plays on the violin crafted in 1740 by Carlo Antonio Testore, genuinely loaned by Dr. Walter Fischli in Switzerland.