Lydia Mordkovitch
British violinist Lydia Mordkovitch was born Lydia Shtimerman in Saratov, Russia on 30 April 1944. She studied at the Stolyarsky School of Music in Odessa and at the Tchaikovsky Conservatoire in Moscow with David Oistrakh. She won the 1967 National Young Musicians Competition in Kyiv and the 1969 Paris-based Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud Competition.
After a period teaching in Israel she made her first appearance in the UK with the Hallé Orchestra in 1979 and settled in the UK (and began her recording contract with Chandos Records) in 1980. Two years later she made her debut in the USA with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Georg Solti.
She made more than sixty recordings for Chandos, and was a professor at London's Royal Academy of Music from 1995.
Lydia Mordkovitch died of cancer in London on 9 December 2014, aged seventy.