Ilias Livieratos receives the 2022 Jan Wallander Prize

30-year-old Ilias Livieratos, violist and student at the Royal College of Music (KMH) has been named this year's recipient of the Jan Wallander Prize. He will now have the opportunity to use a viola made in 1800 by Giuseppe, Antonio, and Giovanni Gagliano.

The Jan Wallander Prize is awarded each year to a distinguished student at one of the music colleges in Sweden. In addition to the honor, the prize-winner will have the opportunity to use an instrument of extremely high class for an extended period of time.

This year's Jan Wallander Prize winner was selected with the jury's motivation:

“The violist Ilias Livieratos possesses a warm and rich sound. He plays in a multifaceted way that is deeply personal and always interesting. He is a wonderful instrumentalist and a worthy recipient of this year´s Jan Wallander Prize”

– Winning the prize is a huge honor, and a big boost for my path as an artist. Already some collaborations with the star-violinist Leonidas Kavakos have begun after he was informed of this success. In addition, being the first non-Swedish prize winner is something which makes me very proud and makes me feel very welcome in this country!

The prize will be awarded on Wednesday 4^th of May during a ceremony in Kungasalen at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm. At the ceremony, Ilias will perform on stage and play music by Schumann, Prokofiev, and Debussy on Gaglianos viola. 2020’s winner of the Jan Wallander Prize, Fred Lindberg, will also attend this year’s ceremony and he will perform music by Bach on his cello made by Gagliano in 1741.

An international jury, this year consisting of the prominent violinists and chamber musicians Beatrice Muthelet and Avri Levitan and Staffan Scheja, professor in piano at the Royal College of Music, named this year’s winner Ilias Livieratos based his performance of music by Mozart and Schumann.

– Ilias interpretations were both interesting and personal. He is a strong instrumentalist with a unique way of playing. With this prize we believe he can evolve both as a chamber musician, soloist, and an artist, says Avri Levitan.

– The violist Ilias Livieratos is a wonderful artist with a musical personality full of great actions and sincere poetry. I wish him all the best in the future with the fantastic Gagliano viola, says Staffan Scheja.

The Jan Wallander Prize

The Jan Wallander Prize is named after Handelsbanken's former CEO and Chairman Jan Wallander and was established by Handelsbanken in cooperation with the Royal College of Music in Stockholm. It gives young talents from music colleges in Sweden the opportunity to use excellent instruments for a long time.

This year’s viola is a part of Handelsbanken Classic Instruments, which consists of eight high-quality instruments. The instruments are owned by a foundation related to Handelsbanken.

Ilias Livieratos

Ilias Livieratos, born in 1991, is originally from Greece. He earned his bachelor's degree in violin from the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich, where he studied with the violinist and conductor Christoph Poppen. He is also an alumnus of the Mozarteum Salzburg. In 2021 he came to Stockholm and the Royal College of Music to study the master’s program in Classical Music for the renowned violist Ellen Nisbeth.

Ilias is the principal violist at the viola of the Athens State Orchestra, Athens' oldest orchestra, and has served as both a violist and a violinist at the Greek National Opera. He has also worked in Camerata-Armonia Atenea and Augsburg Philharmonics.

Earlier this year he was invited by the internationally acclaimed violinist Leonidas Kavakos to a charity concert for the reconstruction of the maternity clinic in Mariupol, Ukraine.