Evgeny Kissin was born in Moscow on 10 October 1971 and began to play by ear and improvise on the piano at the age of two. At six years old, he entered a special school for gifted children, the Moscow Gnessin School of Music, where he was a student of Anna Pavlovna Kantor, who has remained his only teacher. At the age of ten, he made his concerto debut playing Mozart’s Piano Concerto K. 466 and gave his first solo recital in Moscow one year later. He came to international attention in March 1984 when, at the age of twelve, he performed Chopin’s Piano Concertos 1 and 2 in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory with the Moscow State Philharmonic under Dmitri Kitaenko. This concert was recorded live by Melodia, and a two-LP album was released the following year. During the next two years, several Kissin performances in Moscow were recorded live and five more LPs were released by Melodia. Kissin’s first appearances outside Russia were in 1985 in Eastern Europe, followed a year later by his first tour of Japan. In 1987 he made his West European debut at the Berlin Festival. In 1988 he toured Europe with the Moscow Virtuosi and Vladimir Spivakov and also made his London debut with the London Symphony Orchestra under Valery Gergiev. In December of the same year he performed with Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic in a New Year’s concert which was broadcast internationally, with the performance repeated the following year at the Salzburg Easter Festival. Audio and video recordings of the New Year’s concert were made by Deutsche Grammophon. In 1990 Kissin made his first appearance at the BBC Promenade Concerts in London and that same year made his North American debut, performing both Chopin piano concertos with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Zubin Mehta. The following week he opened Carnegie Hall’s Centennial season with a spectacular debut recital, which was recorded live by BMG Classics. Musical awards and tributes from around the world have been showered upon Kissin. In 1987 he received the Crystal Prize of the Osaka Symphony Hall for the best performance of the year 1986 (which was his first performance in Japan). In 1991 he received the Musician of the Year Prize from the Chigiana Academy of Music in Siena, Italy. He was special guest at the 1992 Grammy Awards Ceremony, broadcast live to an audience estimated at over one billion, and became Musical America’s youngest Instrumentalist of the Year in 1995. In 1997 he received the prestigious Triumph Award for his outstanding contribution to Russia’s culture, one of the highest cultural honors to be awarded in the Russian Republic, and again, the youngest-ever awardee. He was the first pianist to be invited to give a recital at the BBC Proms (1997), and, in the 2000 season, was the first concerto soloist ever to be invited to play in the Proms opening concert. In May 2001 Kissin was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music by the Manhattan School of Music. In December 2003 in Moscow, he received the Shostakovich Award, one of Russia’s highest musical honors. In June 2005, he was awarded an Honorary Membership of the Royal Academy of Music in London. Kissin’s recordings have also received numerous awards and accolades, including the Edison Klassiek in The Netherlands and the Diapason d’Or and the Grande Prix of La Nouvelle Academie du Disque in France, as well as awards from music magazines throughout the world. His recording of works by Scriabin, Medtner and Stravinsky won him a Grammy in 2006 for Best Instrumental Soloist and, in 2002, he was named Echo Klassik Soloist of the Year. His first studio recording, in 1988 for RCA Red Seal, was of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with Gergiev/London Symphony Orchestra, and six Etudes-Tableaux, Op. 39. Among other works recorded for RCA Red Seal are two Chopin recital programmes, one with the four Ballades, Barcarolle, Berceuse, and Scherzo No. 4, Op. 54, and another with the 24 Preludes Op. 28, Sonata No. 2 and Polonaise in A- flat; Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, Brahms’ Variations on a Theme of Paganini, and Francks’s Prelude, Choral and Fugue; Schumann’s Fantasy, Op. 17 and five Etudes d’execution transcendante by Liszt; Schumann’s Kreisleriana and the Bach-Busoni Chaconne; Bach-Busoni Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C major, Glinka-Balakirev The Lark and Mussorgsky Pictures at an Exhibition; Schumann’s Sonata No. 1 in F sharp minor and Carnaval; and an all-Brahms disc including Sonata No. 3 in F Minor and five Hungarian dances. His newest recording to be released in September 2005 includes works by Scriabin, Medtner and Stravinsky’s Movements from Pétrouchka. A recent duo recital with James Levine of works by Schubert was recorded live at Carnegie Hall and will be a forthcoming release on RCA Red Seal. Other recital albums include Schubert Sonata No. 21 in B flat major and Schubert-Liszt Four Songs (BMG/RCA Victor Red Seal), Schubert Wanderer Fantasie, Brahms Seven Pieces, Op. 116, Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody No. 12 (Deutsche Grammophon) and Haydn Sonata No. 30 in A major, Sonata No. 52 in E flat major, and Schubert Sonata in A minor D784 (Sony). Among concerto recordings are the Schumann Concerto with the Vienna Philharmonic and Giulini (Sony Classical); Beethoven Piano Concertos Nos. 2 and 5 with the Philharmonia Orchestra and Levine (Sony Classical); Prokofiev Concertos Nos. 1 and 3 with the Berlin Philharmonic and Abbado (Deutsche Grammophon) and Rachmaninoff Concerto No. 3 with the Boston Symphony and Ozawa (RCA Red Seal); Mozart Concertos Nos. 12 and 20 and Rondo in D major KV. 382, Haydn Concerto in D major, Shostakovich Concerto No. 1 with the Moscow Virtuosi and Spivakov (RCA Red Seal); Beethoven Choral Fantasy with the Berlin Philharmonic and Abbado (Deutsche Grammophon). Christopher Nupen’s documentary film, Evgeny Kissin: The Gift of Music, was released in 2000 on video and DVD by RCA Red Seal. Kissin’s musicality, the depth and poetic quality of his interpretations, and his extraordinary virtuosity have placed him at the forefront of the world’s new generation of young pianists. He is in demand the world over, and has appeared with many great conductors, including Abbado, Ashkenazy, Barenboim, Dohnanyi, Giulini, Levine, Maazel, Muti, Ozawa, Svetlanov and Temirkanov, as well as all the world’s major orchestras. He makes regular recital tours to the United States, Japan and throughout Europe. During the 2007-10 season, Mr. Kissin will embark on several major recording projects for EMI Classics. He will record all five Beethoven concertos with the London Symphony Orchestra and Sir Colin Davis, Prokofiev's 2nd and 3rd concertos with Vladimir Ashkenazy and The Philharmonia Orchestra, both the Brahms piano concertos with James Levine and the Boston Symphony and Mozart piano concerti Nos 20 and 27 with the Kremerata Balitica without conductor.   Source The beginning of the 2011-2012 season sees engagements in major cities across Australia and Asia, including Sydney, Tokyo, Seoul, Hong Kong and Taipei, followed by a tour of major European cities. He then embarks on an extensive tour of the Americas that includes recitals and orchestral appearances throughout the US and Canada, as well as summer performances throughout South America. (Updated 15th October 2011)

Evgeny Kissin ♥ Pianist . Evgeny Kissin has been a musical prodigy since the age of two, when he began to play the piano. His mother, a piano teacher, never taught him, but instead sent him to Moscow's Gnessen School for musically gifted children, where he was enrolled through 1991. Kissin has had only one piano teacher, Anna Pavlovna Kantor, and has never entered the competitive recital circuit. Kissin's advanced interpretations and specialized skills have grown with intensive tutelage, yet his personality and individualism have remained intact. Kissin explained his personal philosophy of music to Time: "True art gives birth to good as opposed to evil," he explained. "Right now we are going through a very turbulent time. The goal of musicians is to make our art, which is humane, kind and international, prevail over all the other things that are evil." By the age of ten, Kissin was already becoming an international legend, without the benefit of an American debut. Harold C. Schonberg, a music critic for the New York Times, was invited by conductor and violinist Vladimir Spivakov to hear Kissin play. Schonberg recalled that "the boy had everything—fingers, tone, and an uncanny ability to know exactly when to modify a tempo, how to accent an inner voice, how to highlight a phrase in the subtlest and most musical of ways. All this at 12." A legendary 1984 concert in Moscow, featuring Kissin's performances of Polish-French composer Frederic Chopin's two piano concertos, put the young prodigy on international map. In 1988 Herbert von Karajan, a conductor and talent scout, summoned Kissin to play the Tchaikovsky concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic. This attention earned Kissin offers from recording companies. Schonberg described Kissin as a "Romantic pianist in the old Russian tradition." Some critics have suggested that Kissin's style is unspoiled because he avoids traditional performance competitions. Peter G. Davis, a music critic for New York, remarked that Kissin was outstanding because he "never had to [compete]." Generally, the competition routine for top-level pianists demands a hard, even, and uniform technique from aspiring stars. Kissin's style stood out from those of his regulated peers. His emotional style of playing, according to Schoenberg, "looks back to a period when a controlled sonority, a singing line, power without banging, tempo modification and poetry were what the great Slavic Romantic pianists represented." Kissin made his long-awaited United States debut on September 20, 1990, at Avery Fisher Hall with the New York Philharmonic. He received a standing ovation from the sellout crowd. A few days later he played a recital at Carnegie Hall. Donal Henahan of the New York Times attended and reported that "It is not often that a young pianist with the technical tools of a Mr. Kissin resists the urge to whip up visceral excitement purely by playing fast and loud…. At times he took an embroidered run so softly that the piano seemed to be murmuring Chopin's thoughts to itself, reminding a listener that, according to contemporary reports, that is exactly how the composer himself played his music." Remarks about the controlled power of Kissin's playing dominated reviews of these concerts. New York's Peter G. Davis marveled that Kissin could "project the combative force of Prokofiev's warlike Sonata No. 6 quite this powerfully and yet temper the onslaught with so much expressive urgency." Critic Michael Walsh wrote in Time, of Kissin's performance of Schumann's Symphonic Etudes at the Carnegie Hall recital, that the Russian played "the series of challenging variations as if he were inventing the piece as he went along." Attesting to the maturity of Kissin's interpretations in an Entertainment Weekly review of the album Evgeny Kissin in Tokyo that included works by Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, Liszt, Chopin, and Scriabin, Walsh concluded that "the point is simply that … Kissin plays with the passion of a young man and the taste of an old one." The intense Kissin relaxed by reading the works of Russian authors Pushkin and Tolstoy; in his rare lighter moods he sometimes played the piano rags of Scott Joplin. Often described as quiet and nervous, Kissin projected a modest demeanor. He himself rejected the "genius" label sometimes pinned on him and downplayed his musical abilities, pointing to his reluctance to approach the profound works of German composer Ludwig van Beethoven. In an interview with Abigail Kuflik of Newsweek, Kissin remarked that "maybe it was easier for me as a young person to play romantic music, to play music with the heart. Beethoven, it's nicer to play also with the mind. Maybe that's why I had to become old." Kissin was far from old at that point, but he quickly added sonatas and concertos by Beethoven to his repertoire and gained reviews as glowing as those he had received previously. One feature that music writers noted over the 1990s, though, was that Kissin's repertoire was less broad than those of his peers; while many pianists cultivated a well-rounded mix of works running from the Classical age of Mozart and Haydn, when the piano was new, to contemporary works, Kissin stuck to tried-and-true warhorses of the 1800s and early 1900s. Kissin made no secret of his distate for contemporary music. "Frankly speaking, I am not sure some of these people deserve to be called composers," he told Tim Smith of the Baltimore Sun, speaking of modern-day composers who sent him new works. The comment pointed to a certain chilliness in Kissin's personality; he wasn't a crowd-pleaser like one of his chief rivals of the early 2000s, the Chinese-born pianist Lang Lang, and he had, wrote Michael White of London's Independent newspaper when Kissin was 27, "the manner of a cruelly introverted child." He refused to discuss his personal life with reporters, and it remained largely a mystery even as Kissin took up new residences in the media hothouses of London and New York. Still, critics and audiences continued to marvel at Kissin's power and control. His recording catalogue grew rapidly as he made new CDs for RCA Red Seal, Sony Classical, and Deutsche Grammophon—the leading European and American classical labels. As he became less a young phenomenon and more a mature artist with a lot of competition in a crowded classical field, some critics began to sour on Kissin. Andrew Clements of the Guardian in London complained of a mechanical quality in Kissin's playing, writing that "one suspects the back of his tailcoat hides the hole for a giant wind-up key." But Kissin took some of the criticism to heart—by 2005 he was expanding his repertoire to include such modernist composer as Arnold Schoenberg and Olivier Messaien—and he took all of it in stride. For audiences worldwide, Kissin communicated something of vital importance to the classical concert experience: a feeling of awe. For the Record … Born on October 10, 1971, in Moscow, U.S.S.R.; given name is sometimes tranliterated as Yevgeny; son of Emilia Kissin (a piano teacher). Education: Attended Gnessen School for musically gifted children, Moscow. Started playing the piano at age two; made debut recital in Moscow in 1982; made debut recording on Melodiya label, U.S.S.R., 1984; signed with RCA Red Seal label; has toured internationally, 1984-. Awards: Diapason d'Or and the Grande Prix of La Nouvelle Academie du Disque, France; Musical America magazine, Instrumentalist of the Year. Addresses: Agent—IMG Artists, Carnegie Hall Tower, 152 W. 57th St., 5th Fl., New York, NY 10019. Selected discography: Carnegie Hall Debut Concert, RCA (Red Seal), 1990. Evgeny Kissin: A Musical Portrait, RCA (Red Seal), 1990. Evgeny Kissin in Tokyo, Sony Classical, 1990. Two Inventions for Piano, RCA. Beethoven in Berlin, Deutsche Grammophon, 1992. Chopin, Vol. 1, RCA, 1993. Serge Prokofiev: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 3, Deutsche Grammophon, 1994. The Legendary 1984 Moscow Concert, RCA, 1995. Beethoven: Piano Concertos Nos. 2 & 5, Sony, 1997. Legends of Russia, Revelation, 1997. Evgeny Kissin Plays Beethoven, Schumann, and Bach/Busoni, BMG, 1998. Evgeny Kissin, Philips, 1998. Chopin: Ballades Nos. 1 & 4, RCA, 1999. Chopin: Sonata No. 2 & Polonaise No. 6, RCA, 2000. Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition, RCA, 2002. Evgeny Kissin Plays Brahms, RCA, 2003. Schumann: Kreisleriana & Fantasie, Op. 17, RCA, 2004. Sources: Periodicals Baltimore Sun, April 13, 2005, p. C1. Daily Telegraph (London, England), Arts section, p. 17. Entertainment Weekly, October 26, 1990. Guardian (London, England), May 4, 2000, p. 6; May 11, 2002, p. 25. Independent (London, England), December 20, 1998, Features section, p. 10. New York, September 2, 1990; October 22, 1990. New York Times, September 22, 1990; October 7, 1990. Newsweek, October 22, 1990. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 14, 2001, p. 21. Source