Sensation of the piano

What do have pianists Van Cliburn, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Grigory Sokolov, Mikhail Pletnev and Nikolai Lugansky in common? They are all winners of one of the most prestigious piano competitions in the world - the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. In 2007, winner of the recent competition became pianist Miroslav Kultyshev, who is coming to Lithuania for the third time.

Kultyshev is one of the most prominent pianists of his generation. Not yet in his mid-twenties, he is now a regular visitor to all the world's major concert halls. Among others, he has already appeared in the Großer Saal of the Vienna Musikverein, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, New York's Avery Fisher Hall, London Wigmore Hall and St. Petersburg Philharmonic Hall. Critics and audiences around the world describe him as a pianist blessed with unparalleled musicality and transcendental virtuosity. “Poetry and an exultant delight in the pianist's art are stamped all over him.”, writes Geoff Brown from The Times (UK).

A review of his debut performance in Salzburg last year describes Kultyshev as a nice young man entered the podium, noticeably without the behaviour of a star, and turned into a magician of the keys. The audience hasn't experienced this kind of breathtaking playing for a long time. (Gottfried Franz Kasparek, Die Salzburger Kulturzeitung).

Kultyshev has already collaborated with many renowned conductors. He regularly works closely with the conductor Valery Gergiev, and the two have appeared together in numerous halls and at several festivals. Kultyshev has also appeared with conductors Vladimir Ashkenazy, Yuri Bashmet, Yuri Temirkanov, Mark Gorenstein, Konstantin Orbelian, Vasilij Sinaiskij, Nikolai Alekseev, Alexander Sladkovsky and many others.

Kultyshev has performed at some of the most famous music festivals throughout Europe and Russia, including the Klavier-Festival Ruhr (Germany), Kissinger Sommer (Germany), Mecklenburg Festspiele Vorpommern (Germany), Elba - European Musical Island (Italy), Stars of White Nights (Russia), Holland Music Sessions (Holland) and many others.

This year, Kultyshev's recording of Franz Liszt's quintessentially Romantic Études d'exécution transcendante was released, a cycle of twelve piano pieces that is arguably the most technically difficult of all such cycles, as well as being the most challenging from a purely musical point of view.

Kultyshev was born in 1985 in St. Petersburg and began studying piano at the age of five, giving his first concert when he was six years old. At the age of ten Kultyshev gave his concerto debut with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic under the baton of Yuri Temirkanov. In 2004 Kultyshev finished at the Special School at the St. Petersburg Conservatoire (prof. Sora Zucker) and at present he is a student of the St. Petersburg Conservatoire (prof. Alexander Sandler).

Organizer