Zino Vinnikov is a Soviet and Dutch violinist and music teacher, born in 1943 in Chelyabinsk. A leading representative of the St. Petersburg violin school, he grew up in Kyiv and studied there with Professor Abram Stern. He subsequently entered the Leningrad Conservatory, studying with Professor Veniamin Sher and, following Sher's death, continuing his studies and postgraduate assistantship with Professor Mikhail Waiman.
While still a student, Vinnikov shared first prize with Viktor Tretyakov at the 1965 All-Union Violin Competition in Moscow. He also received prizes at the 1966 International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow and the 1971 Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels, and won first prize and a gold medal at the 1967 George Enescu International Competition in Bucharest.
He made his debut in 1963 at the Leningrad Philharmonic and the Kirov Theatre. Alongside an active concert career in the Soviet Union and abroad, he taught at the Leningrad Conservatory. In 1979, at the invitation of the Hague Philharmonic Orchestra (Residentie Orkest), he moved to the Netherlands with his family. He has since lived in the Netherlands and France, appearing at festivals in Edinburgh, Santander, Athens, St. Petersburg, Bonn, Paris, Bordeaux, and London.
Vinnikov has performed with conductors including Yuri Temirkanov, Yevgeny Svetlanov, Alexander Dmitriev, Mariss Jansons, Neeme Järvi, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, André Previn, Alain Lombard, Hans Vonk, Jaap van Zweden, and Vladimir Ashkenazy. His artistic collaboration with Yehudi Menuhin produced a successful recording of Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto, Sérénade mélancolique, and Mélodie, with Menuhin conducting the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. His album Zino Vinnikov Plays Fritz Kreisler also received excellent reviews.
As an orchestral musician, Vinnikov served as concertmaster of the Academic Symphony Orchestra of the Leningrad Philharmonic, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London, the Bordeaux-Aquitaine Symphony Orchestra, and the Hague Philharmonic Orchestra. In chamber music, his partners included Philipp Hirschhorn, Mischa Maisky, Boris Pergamenschikow, Natalia Gutman, Eliso Virsaladze, Ronald Brautigam, and Elisabeth Leonskaja. For more than ten years he was first violinist and co-founder of the Netherlands-based Glinka Quartet.
Vinnikov taught for many years at the Leningrad, Rotterdam, and Utrecht conservatories and at the Benjamin Britten Academy. He has continued to give masterclasses, including at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, and to teach private students in the Netherlands. Since 2004, he has collaborated with the St. Petersburg recording studio IMLab, which has issued recordings including Bach's solo violin sonatas and partitas, violin concertos by Bach and Mozart, and violin-and-piano pieces with pianist Sergei Maltsev. His discography, released by labels including Melodiya, RCA/Erasmus, Residentie Orkest, Tring International, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Eroica Classical, and IMLab, includes music by composers from Bach and Vivaldi to Tchaikovsky, Ravel, and Shostakovich. In 2013 he was appointed a Knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion.