Dumitru Pocitari

Dumitru Pocitari was born in 1991 in Moldova. He comes from a family with great musical traditions. He started his music studes at the age of seven.

Between 2000-2012, he won numerous prizes and medals at international violin competitions in Romania, Kasakhstan, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Russia and Israel.

He has participated in master classes with professors such as Eduard Wulfson, Phillipe Bride, Bujor Prelipcean, Serban Lupu, Zakhar Bron, Julian Rachlin, Alexandra Soumm, Nikolaj Znaider and Pinchas Zukerman. As a soloist, he performed with "Moscow Virtuosi under the baton of Vladimir Spivakov at the "Ascending Stars" festiwal in Kremlin.” He also performed under the baton of Zubin Mehta with The Symphony Orchestra of the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music in Tel-Aviv, at the Alte Oper in Frankfurt and with the Israel Philharmonic at The Charles Bronfmann Auditorium.

Dumitru has performed several times with outstanding pianists, such as Marta Argerich, Fazil Say, Yefim Bronfman, Behzod Abduraimov, Daniil Trifonov and Leif Ove Andsnes, at chamber music concerts in Israel and Italy. He has been a member of the Israel Philharmonic since 2014 and in 2019 he became the first concertmaster of the orchestra.

In 2022, he won first place in the International "Classic Strings" Competition in Dubai, receiving two special awards in the final: for the best sound and for the best interpretation of the obligatory Concerto written by Alexey Shor.

In the same year, Dumitru performed as a soloist with orchestras in such places as The Great Hall of The Berlin Philharmonic, The Golden Hall of The Musikverein in Vienna, The Hall of B. Smetana in Prague, The Liszt Concert Hall in Budapest, The Hercules Hall in Munich. In March 2023, he recorded a new piece of Alexey Shor for Naxos.

This year as a soloist, he performed Sibelius's violin concerto with the accompaniment of The Subcarpathian Philharmonic Orchestra and Brahms's Double Concerto with cellist Valentin Radutiu (first cellist of The Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin) accompanied by the Opole Philharmonic Orchestra. Recently he became first concertmaster of The Wiener Symphoniker.

Dumitru plays a violin made by Giovanni Battista Guadagnini from 1753.