Viktoria Mullova

Viktoria Yurievna Mullova (Russian: Виктория Юрьевна Муллова, IPA: [vʲɪˈktorʲɪɪ̯ə ˈmuɫəvə]; born 27 November 1959) is a Russian-born British violinist. She is best known for her performances and recordings of a number of violin concerti, compositions by J.S. Bach, and her innovative interpretations of popular and jazz compositions by Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, The Beatles, and others. Mullova was born in Zhukovsky, 45 km from Moscow, in Soviet Russia. At the age of four, she was encouraged to start her violin training by her father Yuri Mullov, the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute physicist and engineer. After studying at the Central Music School of Moscow and at the Moscow Conservatory under Leonid Kogan, she won first prize at the 1980 International Jean Sibelius Violin Competition in Helsinki and the gold medal at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1982. She remembered the whole experience of the Soviet quasi-religious state-sponsored musical education as an overly stressful nightmare full of hypocrisy: "Naturally, I have never believed in communism. But everything was a play. I knew I wanted to leave, and I was pretending to be a naive girl".