“Like his fellow Russian pianists Sergei Rachmaninoff and Sergei Prokofiev, Daniil Trifonov is also a composer, a real rarity among today’s hyper-specialized classical virtuosos,” writes Patrick Neas in Wednesday’s (9/11) Kansas City Star. “Trifonov will perform his own Piano Concerto with the Kansas City Symphony … Nov. 18, 19 and 20. [Music Director] Michael Stern also will conduct music by Ludwig van Beethoven and Johannes Brahms. Trifonov has won a slew of awards, including first prize at the 13th Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition and first prize, gold medal, and grand prix at the XIV International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. The 25-year-old pianist is a bona fide sensation.… ‘He’s written a concerto which not only hangs together, but is beautiful,’ Stern said. ‘The complexity of the first movement is incredible, and the final movement is pretty hair-raising, too. But, for me, the second movement is so beautiful. It sounds like an original voice. There is some Rachmaninoff and some Scriabin and some Prokofiev influence, but how could there not be? He’s steeped in that music and plays it incredibly well.’ ” The concert includes Beethoven’s “Egmont” Overture and Brahms’s Symphony No. 2.
Posted November 11, 2016
Daniil Trifonov photo by Dario Acosta / DG
