click here to read the news release

Click here to read the news release

More about the announcement

And that’s not all: the multi-faceted pianist also plays jazz and is a professor of piano in Stuttgart. Read all about him in this 21C Profile interview.

Kirill Gerstein on Bach, Rach and jazz: an interview from the Minnesota Public Radio station.
Hear Kirill play Rachmaninoff’s Melodie op. 3, recently broadcast on NPR’s Performance Today

The 29-year-old pianist’s engagements this summer have been an airline company’s dream. In July and August, in order, Gerstein played a Mendelssohn Concerto in Tel Aviv; chamber music in Colmar, France; Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” (the original band version) in Saarbrücken, Germany; more chamber music at the Aix-en-Provence and Verbier festivals in France and Switzerland; a recital at Verbier; Bernstein’s “Age of Anxiety” in Caracas, Venezuela with Gustavo Dudamel and the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra; and chamber music at the Salon-de-Provence in France, the Delft Festival in The Netherlands, and the Lucerne Festival in Switzerland. Gerstein’s Lucerne Festival concert was broadcast on New York’s WQXR last week. [note: 8/20] View a clip from his Caracas performance with Dudamel last month of Bernstein’s “Age of Anxiety”.

For his London recital at Queen Elizabeth Hall this week, Kirill Gerstein chose a programme full of tradition and yet also which was on the cutting edge. Juxtaposing Schoenberg and Busoni with Bach and Rachmaninoff, he proved that beyond being prodigiously technically endowed, he: “is a player of patrician finesse and the most fastidious intelligence” (Classical Source, April 1, 2009). The review continued citing his Bach as an “uplifting joyously exuberant reading”, and his Schoenberg and Busoni as “readings of the utmost penetration”. Read the complete review here

The recital marked his second London solo appearance although he performs regularly in London in various chamber music constellations. His next performance will find him on 15 June 2009 for a BBC Lunchtime concert performance with Steven Isserlis at the Wigmore Hall. The program will include the London premiere of Mikhail Pletnev’s cello sonata.

The Frankfurter Neue Presse noted and praised not only the “poetry” but also “his way of finding the inner intensity” of the work. The complete review can be read here.

Congratulations Kirill

gave a splendid rendition of Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. Rachmaninoff is just high-grade kitsch, sugar-sweet emotions, superficial virtuosity – right? Don’t jump to conclusions – this rhapsody, in which the composer effortlessly conjures the dies irae out of the intervals of the theme in the bass line, shows all the signs of imaginative invention at work, and anyway, in the end it’s always a question of how the music is played. The supple, elegant succession of tones and shades, the playful purposefulness, the wit and accuracy of the outstanding but never laboured mastery with which the artist negotiates even the thunderous cascades of chords – all this reflects back on the piece and gives it polish and dignity, so that even in the company of two absolute masterpieces such as Mozart’s late E-flat major symphony and Schumann’s Second Symphony it does not appear outdated.

read the complete review here.

The Koelner Rundschau commented that Gerstein “made the piano sing” and continued about the Bychkov-Gerstein collaboration by noting that:

…the soulful swell of the strings underpinned and mellowed the horns to an almost unbearable sweetness. In the finale the pianist’s accomplished hands thundered, and his fingers flew, until the … melody of the finale brought a smile to listeners’ lips, whispering: “That was just a little joke.” Gerstein’s knowing glance at the audience was perfectly timed.

read the complete review here.

A city in which he has a long and warm relationship with the public, Gerstein is a regular guest at the Philharmonie and performs in many constellations including solo recitals and chamber formations. His last performances were with Gurzenich Orchestra Cologne in May 2008.

Congratulations Kirill!!!