53 Jewish classical violinists

Joseph Yulyevich Achron, also seen as Akhron was a Russian-born Jewish composer and violinist, who settled in the United States. His preoccupation with Jewish elements and his desire to develop a "Jewish" harmonic and contrapuntal idiom, underscored and informed much of his work. His friend, the composer Arnold Schoenberg, described Achron in his obituary as "one of the most underrated modern composers".

Luigi Arditi was an Italian violinist, composer and conductor.

Leopold von Auer was a Hungarian violinist, academic, conductor and composer, best known as an outstanding violin teacher.

Joshua David Bell is an American violinist and conductor. He plays the Gibson Stradivarius.

Miri Ben-Ari is an Israeli-American violinist. She lives in New Jersey.

Zakhar Bron is a Russian violinist and violin pedagogue of Jewish descent.

Haim Fabrizio Cipriani is a rabbi and a professional musician.

Samuel Dushkin was an American violinist, composer and pedagogue of Polish birth and Jewish origin.

Mischa Elman was a Russian-born Jewish-American violinist, famed for his passionate style, beautiful tone, and impeccable artistry and musicality.

Joshua Epstein is an Israelian musician, classical violinist and music educator. The recipient of many international prizes from violin competitions and recording labels, Epstein's work as a soloist and chamber musician is extensive. Equally extensive is his influence as a professor of violin, which extends over more than half a century. Epstein continues his work at the Hochschule für Musik Saar in Saarbrücken, Germany, where he has lived and taught since 1978.

Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst was a Moravian-Jewish violinist, violist and composer. He was widely seen as the outstanding violinist of his time and one of Niccolò Paganini's greatest successors.

Ralph Evans is an American violinist, best known as first violinist of the Fine Arts Quartet.

Aldo Ferraresi was a celebrated Italian concert violinist and violin pedagogue.

Alexander A. Gilman is a German violinist, academic teacher and artistic director of the LGT Young Soloists. He has been performing internationally as a soloist and chamber musician and regularly conducting masterclasses.

Ivry Gitlis is an Israeli virtuoso violinist and UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador. He has performed with the world's top orchestras, including the London Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, and Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.

Ida Haendel, was a Polish-British-Canadian violinist. Haendel was a child prodigy, her career spanning over seven decades. She also became an influential teacher.

Daniel Alan Heifetz is an American concert violinist and pedagogue best known as the Founder of the Heifetz International Music Institute. His career has been focused on education and the art of communication through performance.

Jascha Heifetz was a Russian-American violinist. 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."

Bronisław Huberman was a Jewish Polish violinist. He was known for his individualistic and personal interpretations and was praised for his tone color, expressiveness, and flexibility. The Gibson ex-Huberman Stradivarius violin which bears his name was stolen twice and recovered once during the period in which he owned the instrument. Huberman is also remembered for founding the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and thus providing refuge from the Third Reich for nearly 1,000 European Jews.

Joseph Joachim was a Hungarian violinist, conductor, composer and teacher who made an international career, based in Hanover and Berlin. A close collaborator of Johannes Brahms, he is widely regarded as one of the most significant violinists of the 19th century.

Oleg Moiseyevich Kagan was a Soviet violinist, known for his chamber collaborations with such musicians as pianist Sviatoslav Richter and cellist Natalia Gutman, his wife. He was also a significant proponent of modern music, in particular Berg's Violin Concerto. Several recently released concert recordings have added to his posthumous reputation.

Paul Kochanski was a Polish violinist, composer and arranger active in the United States.

Dmitri Pavlovich Kogan was a Russian violinist and an Honoured Artist of the Russian Federation.

Leonid Borisovich Kogan was a preeminent Soviet violinist during the 20th century. Many consider him to be among the greatest violinists of the 20th century. In particular, he is considered to have been one of the greatest representatives of the Soviet School of violin playing.

Friedrich-Max "Fritz" Kreisler was an Austrian-born American 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.

Gidon Kremer is a Latvian classical violinist, artistic director, and founder of Kremerata Baltica.

Lorin Varencove Maazel was an American conductor, violinist and composer. He began conducting at the age of eight and by 1953 had decided to pursue a career in music. He had established a reputation in the concert halls of Europe by 1960 but, by comparison, his career in the U.S. progressed far more slowly. He served as music director of The Cleveland Orchestra, Orchestre National de France, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the New York Philharmonic, among other posts. Maazel was well-regarded in baton technique and possessed a photographic memory for scores. Described as mercurial and forbidding in rehearsal, he mellowed in old age.

Robert Nathaniel Mann was a violinist, composer, conductor, and founding member of the Juilliard String Quartet, as well as a faculty member at the Manhattan School of Music. Mann, the first violinist at Juilliard, served on the school's string quartet for over fifty years until his retirement in 1997.

Yehudi Menuhin, Baron Menuhin, was an American-born violinist and conductor who spent most of his performing career in Britain. He is widely considered one of the great violinists of the 20th century. He played the Soil Stradivarius, considered one of the finest violins made by Italian luthier Antonio Stradivari.

Nathan Mironovich Milstein was a Jewish Ukrainian-born American virtuoso violinist.

Ludwig Minkus, also known as Léon Fyodorovich Minkus, was a Jewish-Austrian composer of ballet music, a violin virtuoso and teacher.

Shlomo Mintz is an Israeli violin virtuoso, violist and conductor. He regularly appears with orchestras and conductors on the international scene and is heard in recitals and chamber music concerts around the world.

Alexander Yakovlevich Mogilevsky was a classical concert violinist and director of the Kremlin Band for Tsar Nicholas II.

Erika Morini Siracusano was a Jewish Austrian violinist.

David Fyodorovich Oistrakh, orig. German: Eustrach, was a Soviet classical violinist, violist and conductor.

Igor Davidovich Oistrakh is a Russian violinist.

Eugene Ormandy was a Hungarian-American conductor and violinist, best known for his association with the Philadelphia Orchestra, as its music director. His 44-year association with the orchestra is one of the longest enjoyed by any conductor with a single orchestra. Under his baton, the Philadelphia Orchestra had three gold records and won two Grammy Awards.

Itzhak Perlman 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. He has conducted the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Westchester Philharmonic. In 2015, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He has been awarded 16 Grammy Awards and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and four Emmy Awards.

Salamone Rossi or Salomone Rossi was an Italian Jewish violinist and composer. He was a transitional figure between the late Italian Renaissance period and early Baroque.

Siegfried Saloman was a Danish violinist and composer. A contemporary of Franz Liszt, he was a pupil of Johannes Frederik Fröhlich, Holger Simon Paulli, Frederik Thorkildsen Wexschall and Johan Peter Emilius Hartmann, from whom he received violin-playing lessons. He toured extensively throughout Europe with the Swedish opera singer Henriette Nissen, to whom he was married in 1850. In 1842 his nine booklets of romances and songs were published in Hamburg.

Abraham Alexander Schneider was a violinist, conductor and educator. Born to a Lithuanian Jewish family in Vilnius, Lithuania, he later moved to the United States as a member of the Budapest String Quartet.

Michel Schwalbé was a French violinist of Polish origin.

Samuel Sherman was the court composer and conductor for Emperor Franz Josef I of the Austro-Hungarian Empire between 1903 and 1909.

Hellmut Stern was a German violinist who played principal violin with the Berlin Philharmonic. He published his autobiography in 1990, narrating his life in exile in China from 1938, Israel from 1949, and the U.S. from 1956, and his return to Berlin in 1961. Through his membership of the board of the Berlin Philharmonic, he initiated the orchestra's first tour to Israel.

Isaac Stern was an American violinist.

Johann Strauss III was an Austrian composer whose father was Eduard Strauss, whose uncles were Johann Strauss II and Josef Strauss, and whose grandfather was Johann Strauss I. He was unofficially entrusted with the task of upholding his family's tradition after the dissolution of the Strauss Orchestra by his father in 1901. His talents were not fully realized during his lifetime as musical tastes had changed in the Silver Age with more popular composers such as Franz Lehár and Oscar Straus dominating the Viennese musical scene with their operettas, although his uncle, Johann Strauss II, supervised his development as a musician, a fact disputed by Eduard Strauss.

Joseph Szigeti was a Hungarian violinist.

Roman Totenberg was a Polish-American violinist and educator. A child prodigy, he lived in Poland, Moscow, Berlin, and Paris, before formally immigrating to the U.S. in 1938, at age 27. He performed and taught nationally and internationally throughout his life.

Maxim Alexandrovich Vengerov is a Russian-born Israeli violinist, violist, and conductor. Classic FM has called him “one of the greatest violinists in the world.”

Henryk Wieniawski was a Polish violinist and composer.

Wanda Wiłkomirska was a Polish violinist and academic teacher. She was known for both the classical repertoire and for her interpretation of 20th-century music, having received two Polish State Awards for promoting Polish music to the world as well as other awards for her contribution to music. She gave world premiere performances of numerous contemporary works, including music by Tadeusz Baird and Krzysztof Penderecki. Wiłkomirska performed on a violin crafted by Pietro Guarneri in 1734 in Venice. She taught at the music academies of Mannheim and Sydney.

Efrem Zimbalist Sr. was a concert violinist, composer, teacher, conductor and director of the Curtis Institute of Music.

Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider is a Danish violinist and conductor.