Shai Wosner

Pianist Shai Wosner commands an expansive repertoire reaching from Beethoven through Ligeti to later composers. Programs and recordings alike often place standard works beside contemporary scores.

Born in Israel in 1976, he studied piano in Tel Aviv with Emanuel Krasovsky and pursued composition, theory, and improvisation under Andre Hadju. At twenty-one he entered New York’s Juilliard School to work with Emanuel Ax and has lived in the city ever since. Designation as a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist in 2007 brought numerous engagements and recordings with all BBC national and regional orchestras. American appearances have included the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, and Cleveland Orchestra; European dates have featured the Vienna Philharmonic and Berlin Staatskapelle among others. Chamber partners have included clarinetist Martin Fröst, violinist Christian Tetzlaff, and cellist Lynn Harrell, while a continuing duo partnership links him with Orion Weiss.

He took part in the early workshops that established conductor Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra and has also collaborated with pianist Saleem Abboud Ashkar. An initial recording credit arrived in 2002 on Cypres Records, an album of Salvatore Sciarrino’s piano music shared with several other pianists. The solo debut followed in 2010 on Onyx with works by Brahms and Schoenberg, after which most releases have appeared on the same label.

His concerts frequently pair repertory pieces with new compositions, as when a tour with the East Coast Chamber Orchestra juxtaposed Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 14 in E flat major, K. 449, with the premiere of Christopher Cerrone’s concerto The Air Suspended. Concerto recordings with the BBC orchestras and additional chamber discs have been issued, including several Schubert albums on Onyx, among them a 2020 set of four piano sonatas. In 2023 he released a recording of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations, Op. 120.