Ranker

Anime Underground

Button Mash

Graveyard Shift

Total Nerd

Unspeakable Times

Weird History

Weird Nature

Weirdly Interesting

Sports

Music

Entertainment

Living

Culture

Food

Makeup

Halloween

Thanksgiving

Holidays

Watchworthy

HBO Max

Lists that rank the greatest works, composers, and musicians by instrument. 

Classical Music & Opera

pageType

safe_grapeshot

X_AMP

top_search_2-3

affiliatized

mod_neutered

cb_classical-music-and-opera

<p>Voting is now open for the Virtuoso Channel Hall of Fame: World's Greatest Violinists! </p>1. User voting changes list order. Vote for your favorite artists - you decide who's the best! <br />2. User submissions allowed. The list we've drawn up includes about 70 great performers. We'd like you to help us choose a further select group of entrants. Who do you think should join? To add your nomination, please scroll down to the end of this page.

World's Greatest Violinists 

The World's Greatest Violinists

Best People Lists, Top 10 People- Find any People List at Ranker

Person

Virtuoso Channel

People

Famous People List: The Top People Lists and Top 10s

people

VirtuosoChannel

Gender

Women

Gen Zs

Millenials

Gen Xers

Baby Boomers

Region

West Coast US

Mountain US

Midwest US

Southern US

Northeastern US

International

AMAZON

Ling Ling

Hilary Hahn

Hilary Hahn (born November 27, 1979) is an American violinist. She has performed throughout the world both as a soloist with leading orchestras and conductors and as a recitalist. She has also built a reputation as a champion of contemporary music. Several composers have written works for her, including concerti by Edgar Meyer and Jennifer Higdon, partitas by Antón García Abril, and a violin and piano sonata by Lera Auerbach.

Twosetviolin

Niccolò Paganini

Ray Chen

Ray Chen (born 6 March 1989) is a Taiwanese-Australian violinist. He was the first prize winner in the 2008 International Yehudi Menuhin Violin Competition and the 2009 Queen Elisabeth Competition and now records on the Sony Masterworks label.

Itzhak Perlman

Itzhak Perlman (Hebrew: יצחק פרלמן‎; born 31 August 1945) is an Israeli-American violinist, conductor, and music teacher. Over the course of his career, Perlman has performed worldwide, and throughout the United States, in venues that have included a State Dinner at the White House honoring Queen Elizabeth II, and at the Presidential Inauguration of President Obama, and he has conducted the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and the Westchester Philharmonic. In 2015, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.



Antonio Vivaldi

Antonio Lucio Vivaldi (UK: , US: , Italian: [anˈtɔːnjo ˈluːtʃo viˈvaldi] (listen); 4 March 1678 – 28 July 1741) was an Italian Baroque musical composer, virtuoso violinist, teacher, and priest. Born in Venice, the capital of the Venetian Republic, he is regarded as one of the greatest Baroque composers, and his influence during his lifetime was widespread across Europe. He composed many instrumental concertos, for the violin and a variety of other instruments, as well as sacred choral works and more than forty operas. His best-known work is a series of violin concertos known as the Four Seasons.
Many of his compositions were written for the all-female music ensemble of the Ospedale della Pietà, a home for abandoned children. Vivaldi had worked there as a Catholic priest for 1 1/2 years and was employed there from 1703 to 1715 and from 1723 to 1740. Vivaldi also had some success with expensive stagings of his operas in Venice, Mantua and Vienna. After meeting the Emperor Charles VI, Vivaldi moved to Vienna, hoping for royal support. However, the Emperor died soon after Vivaldi's arrival, and Vivaldi himself died, in poverty, less than a year later.



David Garrett

David Christian Bongartz (born 4 September 1980), better known by his stage name David Garrett, is a German pop and crossover violinist and recording artist.

Jascha Heifetz

Jascha Heifetz (; February 2  [O.S.  January 20] 1901 – December 10, 1987) was a Russian-American violinist. Many consider him to be the greatest violinist of all time. Born in Vilna (Vilnius), he moved as a teenager to the United States, where his Carnegie Hall debut was rapturously received. He was a virtuoso since childhood—Fritz Kreisler, another leading violinist of the twentieth century, said on hearing Heifetz's debut, "We might as well take our fiddles and break them across our knees."He had a long and successful performing career; however, after an injury to his right (bowing) arm, he switched his focus to teaching.Late in life, Heifetz became a dedicated teacher and a champion of socio-political causes. He publicly advocated to establish 911 as an emergency phone number, and crusaded for clean air. He and his students at the University of Southern California protested smog by wearing gas masks, and in 1967 he converted his Renault passenger car into an electric vehicle.

David Oistrakh

David Fyodorovich Oistrakh (30 September [O.S. 17 September] 1908 – 24 October 1974), was a Soviet classical violinist and violist.
Oistrakh collaborated with major orchestras and musicians from many parts of the world, and was the dedicatee of numerous violin works, including both of Dmitri Shostakovich's violin concerti, and the violin concerto by Aram Khachaturian. He is considered one of the preeminent violinists of the 20th century.

Maxim Vengerov

Maxim Alexandrovich Vengerov (Russian: Максим Александрович Венгеров, pronounced [mɐkˈsʲim ɐlʲɪˈksandrəvʲɪtɕ vʲɪnˈɡʲɛrəf]) (born 20 August 1974 in Novosibirsk) is a Russian-born Israeli violinist, violist, and conductor.

Yehudi Menuhin

Yehudi Menuhin, Baron Menuhin,  (22 April 1916 – 12 March 1999) was an American-born violinist and conductor who spent most of his performing career in Britain. He is widely considered one of the greatest violinists of the 20th century. He played the Soil Stradivarius considered one of the finest violins made by Italian luthier Antonio Stradivari.

Eugène Ysaÿe

Eugène-Auguste Ysaÿe (French: [øʒɛn iza.i]; 16 July 1858 – 12 May 1931) was a Belgian violinist, composer and conductor. He was regarded as "The King of the Violin", or, as Nathan Milstein put it, the "tsar".

Pablo De Sarasate

Pablo de Sarasate

Martín Melitón Pablo de Sarasate y Navascués (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈpaβlo saɾaˈsate]; 10 March 1844 – 20 September 1908) was a Spanish violinist and composer of the Romantic period.

Fritz Kreisler

Friedrich "Fritz" Kreisler (February 2, 1875 – January 29, 1962) was an Austrian-born violinist and composer. One of the most noted violin masters of his day, and regarded as one of the greatest violinists of all time, he was known for his sweet tone and expressive phrasing. Like many great violinists of his generation, he produced a characteristic sound which was immediately recognizable as his own. Although it derived in many respects from the Franco-Belgian school, his style is nonetheless reminiscent of the gemütlich (cozy) lifestyle of pre-war Vienna.

Anne-Sophie Mutter

Anne-Sophie Mutter (born 29 June 1963) is a German violinist. She was supported early in her career by Herbert von Karajan, and has had several works composed especially for her, by Sebastian Currier, Henri Dutilleux, Sofia Gubaidulina, Witold Lutosławski, Norbert Moret, Krzysztof Penderecki, André Previn, Wolfgang Rihm, John Williams and others.

Janine Jansen

Janine Jansen (Dutch pronunciation: [ʒɑnine jɑnsən]); born 7 January 1978 in Soest in the Netherlands) is a violinist and violist.

Leonidas Kavakos

Leonidas Kavakos (Greek: Λεωνίδας Καβάκος; born 30 October 1967) is a Greek violinist and conductor. As a violinist, he has won prizes at several international violin competitions, including the Sibelius, Paganini, and Indianapolis competitions. He has also recorded for record labels such as Sony/BMG and BIS. As a conductor, he was an artistic director of the Camerata Salzburg and has been a guest conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra and Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Chloe Chua

Henryk Szeryng

Henryk Szeryng (usually pronounced HEN-rik SHEH-ring) (22 September 1918 – 3 March 1988) was a Polish-Mexican violinist.

Midori Goto

Midori Goto (五嶋 みどり, Gotō Midori, born October 25, 1971) who performs under the mononym Midori, is a Japanese-born American violinist. She made her debut with the New York Philharmonic at age 11 as a surprise guest soloist at the New Year's Eve Gala in 1982. In 1986 her performance at the Tanglewood Music Festival with Leonard Bernstein conducting his own composition made the front-page headlines in The New York Times. Midori became a celebrated child prodigy, and one of the world's  preeminent violinists as an adult.Midori has been honored as an educator and for her community engagement endeavors. When she was 21, she established her foundation Midori and Friends to bring music education to young people in underserved communities in New York City and Japan, which has evolved into four distinct organizations with worldwide impact. In 2007, Midori was appointed as a UN Messenger of Peace. In 2018 she joined the violin faculty at the Curtis Institute while remaining on the USC Thornton School Of Music Violin faculty holding the The Judge Widney Professor of Music Chair. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2012.

Isaac Stern

Isaac Stern (21 July 1920 – 22 September 2001) was an American violinist.

Nathan Milstein

Nathan Mironovich Milstein (January 13, 1904 [O.S. December 31, 1903] – December 21, 1992) was a Ukrainian-born American virtuoso violinist.
Widely considered one of the finest violinists of the 20th century, Milstein was known for his interpretations of Bach's solo violin works and for works from the Romantic period.  He was also known for his long career: he performed at a high level into his mid 80s, retiring only after suffering a broken hand.

Pinchas Zukerman

Pinchas Zukerman  (Hebrew: פנחס צוקרמן‎, born 16 July 1948) is an Israeli-American violinist, violist and conductor.

Samvel Yervinyan

Samvel Yervinyan (Armenian: Սամվել Երվինյան, born January 25, 1966) is an Armenian violinist and composer.

Voting is now open for the Virtuoso Channel Hall of Fame: World's Greatest Violinists! 1. User voting changes list order. Vote for your favorite artists - you ...