Boris Kuschnir was born in Kiev in 1948. He studied violin at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatoire with Boris Belenky and chamber music with Valentin Berlinsky of the Borodin Quartet. He won numerous prizes at international violin and chamber music competitions (Paris, Belgrade, Sion, Trapani, Bratislava, Florence, Trieste, Hamburg) and his many encounters with Dmitri Shostakovich and David Oistrakh (with whom he also studied), had a lasting influence on his artistic development.
For many years he has followed a distinguished career both as a chamber musician and as a teacher.
Professor at the Conservatoire Vienna Private University and also at the University of Music in Graz, his reputation as a teacher has won international recognition with the outstanding success of many of his pupils, including such international names as Julian Rachlin, Nikolaj Znaider, Lorenzo Gatto, Lidia Baich, Dalibor Karvay and Alexandra Soumm. He is a regular jury member of a number of major international music competitions such as the Queen Elizabeth, Tchaikovsky, Paganini, Jacques Thibaud and Rodolfo Lipizer Competitions.
A committed chamber musician, Boris Kuschnir was a founder member of the Moscow String Quartet (1970), the Vienna Schubert Trio (1984), the Vienna Brahms Trio (1993) and the Kopelman Quartet (2002). As such, and as soloist, he has played in some of the world's most illustrious venues, such as the Musikverein, Vienna, the Philharmonie, Berlin, the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, the Ishibashi Memorial Hall, Tokyo and the Wigmore Hall, London; he has taken part in numerous festivals such as Edinburgh, Ravinia, Salzburg, Lockenhaus, Spoleto, Bregenz, Meklenburg-Vorpommen and the Sviatoslav Richter Winterfestival in Moscow. He appears regularly at the Verbier Festival in Switzerland.
He has appeared with artists including Elisabeth Leonskaja, B oris Berezovsky, Elena Bashkirova, Julian Rachlin, Leif Ove Andsnes, Nikolaj Znaider, Maxim Vengerov, Dmitri Sitkovetsky, Renaud and Gautier Capuçon, Viviane Hagner, Gérard Caussé, Yuri Bashmet, Nobuko Imai, Laurence Power, Boris Pergamenschikow, Natalia Gutman and Stephen Isserlis. His has made numerous recordings for labels including EMI, Naxos, Nimbus and Wigmore Live.
Boris Kuschnir was awarded the use of a Stradivarius violin (La Rouse Boughton, 1703) by the Austrian National Bank in recognition of his services to music in Austria.