Biography
Having arrived in France at a very young age, Tedi Papavrami discovered a country and a culture that were, at the time, completely foreign to him. His natural curiosity, his need to master the French language in order to make this country his own, and a deep sense of loneliness in the beginning led him to devour books—always in French: Stendhal, Proust, Flaubert, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Kafka.
This boundless curiosity, combined with a rare intellectual and artistic rigor, allows him to naturally bridge the gap between his original field and other horizons, making his career in the music world truly unique.
After the death of Albanian translator Jusuf Vrioni, Tedi Papavrami resumed translating the works of Ismail Kadaré in 2000—an author he had first encountered as a child in Albania. This literary endeavor became a way for him to make a living outside of his career as a violinist. This work continued in 2013 with the publication of *Fugue for Solo Violin* (Robert Laffont), an autobiographical account unanimously praised by the press, recounting his journey as a child prodigy in Albania and his move to the West. Noticed by Jeanne Moreau, he also appeared in 2003 in *Les Liaisons dangereuses* by Laclos, a television adaptation directed by Josée Dayan.
However, this breakthrough would not have been possible without his exceptional early talent and dedication to the violin from childhood onward. His father, a violin teacher, introduced him to the instrument at the age of five. At eight, he performed in concert with an orchestra in Sarasate’s *Airs bohémiens*, and at eleven, he performed Paganini’s First Concerto with Émile Sauret’s cadenza.
In 1982, while Albania was still cut off from the rest of the world, flutist Alain Marion heard him by chance at a concert and helped secure his invitation to Paris as a French government scholarship recipient. Tedi Papavrami then became a student of Pierre Amoyal at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris. Concerts and television appearances, notably on *Le Grand Échiquier*, marked this period. As a teenager, he continued his musical development on his own, while his family fled the Albanian communist regime to settle in France.
Beginning in the 1990s, he embarked on an international career as a soloist and chamber musician. He has performed with conductors such as Kurt Sanderling, Armin Jordan, Emmanuel Krivine, Manfred Honeck, and François-Xavier Roth, and has collaborated in chamber music with partners such as Martha Argerich, Maria João Pires, Viktoria Mullova, Nelson Goerner, Gary Hoffman, and Paul Meyer. He was also a member of the Schumann Quartet for nine years.
His discography has been honored with numerous awards. His recording of Eugène Ysaÿe’s Sonatas for Solo Violin received a Diapason d’Or and a “Choc de l’année” award in 2014. As both a performer and arranger, he has also recorded works by Bach, Bartók, Paganini, and Scarlatti. The solo violin repertoire plays a central role in his concert activities and his artistic identity.
Based in Geneva, Tedi Papavrami is a violin professor at the Haute École de Musique. He plays a violin made for him in 2022 by luthier David Leonard Wiedmer.