Barnabás Kelemen is one of the best violinists in the world. He had enormous success even when young: he won the first prize in the International Mozart Violin Competition in Salzburg in 1999, and in the Indianapolis International Violin Competition in 2002. In 2001 he won third prize in the Queen Elisabeth International Violin Competition in Brussels.

He regularly performs in the most prestigious concert halls, including Carnegie Hall, the Concertgebouw, the Royal Festival Hall, the Palais des Beaux Arts, Suntory Hall, and the Berlin Philharmonie. He is a frequent guest performer with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Budapest Festival Orchestra, the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra, and many other famous orchestras throughout the world.

He has worked with conductors such as Lorin Maazel, Sir Neville Marriner, Zoltán Kocsis, Péter Eötvös, and Iván Fischer. He is also happy to take up the baton himself, and in recent seasons he has conducted the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra and the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, among others. He is an outstanding chamber musician, and artists such as Dezső Ránki, Isserlis Steven, Miklós Perényi, and José Gallardo are keen to play alongside him.

He has released a total of 17 solo CDs, and one double DVD containing live recordings of all the Mozart violin concertos. His recordings of Bartók, Brahms, and Liszt have garnered important international awards. He has also made three albums with his quartet.

He is a professor at the Academy of Music in Budapest and at the University of Cologne.

His artistry has won the highest accolades of the music world and the state: he has been awarded the Liszt Ferenc, the Kossuth, the Prima, and the Gramophone prizes, and has been decorated with the Knight’s Cross of the Republic of Hungary.

He currently plays on a 1742 Guarneri del Gesù violin, lent to him by the Hungarian state.