Evgeny Kissin

Pianist Evgeny Kissin embodies the enduring lineage of Russian keyboard virtuosity, having converted early childhood brilliance into global acclaim.

Born October 10, 1971, in Moscow, he began piano lessons at the age of two. At six he entered the Gnessin School of Music, part of the Soviet Union’s rigorous system for nurturing exceptional young talent, and trained exclusively under Anna Pavlovna Kantor. Their long association remained his sole formal instruction; she frequently accompanied the family on tours and in daily life. His first orchestral appearance came at ten with the Ulyanovsk Symphony Orchestra, when he performed Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K. 466; one year later he gave a solo recital in Moscow. At twelve he presented both Chopin piano concertos with the Moscow State Philharmonic under Dmitri Kitaenko; the live performance was soon issued on Melodiya as his initial commercial recording.

Recognition reached Western audiences before the Soviet collapse eased travel restrictions. In 1987 he played Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in B flat minor, Op. 23, with the Berlin Philharmonic and Herbert von Karajan at the Berlin Festival, then joined the Moscow Virtuosi for a European tour the next year while still seventeen. American debuts followed in 1990 with the New York Philharmonic and a Carnegie Hall recital. He appeared at the 1992 Grammy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles and, in 1995, became the youngest recipient of Musical America’s Musician of the Year honor.

Subsequent distinctions have included Russia’s Triumph Award, three Grammy Awards, and the 2007 Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli Award in Italy. In 1997 he became the first pianist to present a solo recital at the BBC Proms, drawing a capacity audience of six thousand. Since then he has maintained an active schedule across Europe, North America, and Asia, collaborating with orchestras led by conductors such as Vladimir Ashkenazy, Valery Gergiev, and Simon Rattle. He acquired British citizenship in 2002 and Israeli citizenship in 2013; he has consistently supported Israeli causes and received recognition from the Jewish Children’s Museum of Brooklyn.

Though long admired for technical command, Kissin has cultivated greater introspection in his mature interpretations. His extensive discography for RCA, Deutsche Grammophon, and EMI/Warner Classics centers on Romantic and Russian works spanning Beethoven to Prokofiev. He has also released spoken-word recordings of Yiddish and Russian poetry and, in 2019, joined the Emerson Quartet for The New York Concert, a program of Mozart, Fauré, Dvořák, and Shostakovich. Deutsche Grammophon issued The Salzburg Recital in 2022, by which point his catalog exceeded one hundred releases; many early recordings have appeared on Brilliant Classics.

Kissin has composed as well; his String Quartet, completed in 2016, received its premiere from the Endellion Quartet in 2019 and was later recorded for Nimbus by the Kopelman Quartet. He is married to Karina Arzumanova, with whom he has three children. In 2022 he signed a public letter condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine.