Vladimir Feltsman
Piano

Biography

Pianist and conductor Vladimir Feltsman is one of the most versatile and constantly interesting musicians of our time. His vast repertoire encompasses music from the Baroque to 20th-century composers. A regular guest soloist with leading symphony orchestras in the United States and abroad, he appears in the most prestigious concert series and music festivals all over the world.

In summer 2011, Mr. Feltsman continued his long association with the summer festivals of Ravinia and Aspen, where he performed Rachmaninoff’s Second Concerto with Robert Spano.  He performed Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 with the Chicago Symphony and Sir Andrew Davis in November 2010, and was the featured soloist in the 2010-11 season with the orchestras of Seattle, Long Beach, Columbus and Greensboro.  He played with and conducted the St. Petersburg Philharmonic in May 2011 during that city’s “Festival of Arts.”   In June 2012, Mr. Feltsman will return to his native Russia to work as a conductor with the “Moscow Virtuosi” and will perform again with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, playing Beethoven’s “Emperor” concerto under the baton of Yuri Temirkanov. 

In great demand as a recitalist, Mr. Feltsman returned to Carnegie’s Stern Hall in March 2011, and included within the 2010-11 season recitals in Los Angeles, Kansas City, Palm Beach, Fort Worth, Lincoln, Ann Arbor and Bogota.  Recital appearances in 2011-12 include venues in Philadelphia, Miami, Indianapolis and Richmond.

Mr. Feltsman made a return appearance with the London Symphony Orchestra in June 2010, performing at the Barbican.  His 2009-10 season included recitals in Carnegie Hall, Chicago’s Orchestra Hall, and Washington, DC’s Strathmore Performing Arts Center.   Recital venues that season also included the Detroit Chamber Music Society, the University of Illinois Urbana, the Tilles Center at Long Island University and the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts in West Palm Beach.  He performed Tchaikovsky’s 1st Concerto with the Kansas City Symphony, and in September of 2009, performed Mozart’s Concerto K595 on his own fortepiano with the American Classical Orchestra at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall.  He opened the Hollywood Bowl 2009 Festival performing Prokofieff’s 2nd Piano Concerto with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Mr. Feltsman expressed his lifelong devotion to the music of J.S. Bach in a cycle of concerts which presented the major clavier works of the composer and spanned four consecutive seasons (1992-1996) at the 92nd Street Y in New York. His more recent project, Masterpieces of the Russian Underground, unfolded a panorama of Russian contemporary music through an unprecedented survey of piano and chamber works by fourteen different composers from Shostakovich to the present day and was presented by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in January 2003 with great success. Mr. Feltsman served as Artistic Director for this project as well as performing in most of the pieces presented during the three concert cycle. The programs included a number of world and North American premieres and were also presented in Portland, Oregon and in Tucson, Arizona at the University of Arizona. In the fall of 2006, Mr. Feltsman performed all of the Mozart Piano Sonatas in New York at the Mannes School of Music and NYU’s Tisch Center presented by New School on a specially built replica of the Walter fortepiano.

Born in Moscow in 1952, Mr. Feltsman debuted with the Moscow Philharmonic at age 11. In 1969, he entered the Moscow Tchaikovsky State Conservatory of Music to study piano under the guidance of Professor Jacob Flier. He also studied conducting at both the Moscow and Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) Conservatories. In 1971, Mr. Feltsman won the Grand Prix at the Marguerite Long International Piano Competition in Paris; extensive touring throughout the former Soviet Union, Europe and Japan followed this.

In 1979, because of his growing discontent with the restrictions on artistic freedom under the Soviet regime, Mr. Feltsman signaled his intention to emigrate by applying for an exit visa. In response, he was immediately banned from performing in public and his recordings were suppressed. After eight years of virtual artistic exile, he was finally granted permission to leave the Soviet Union. Upon his arrival in the United States in 1987, Mr. Feltsman was warmly greeted at the White House, where he performed his first recital in North America. That same year, his debut at Carnegie Hall established him as a major pianist on the American and international scene.

A dedicated educator of young musicians, Mr. Feltsman holds the Distinguished Chair of Professor of Piano at the State University of New York, New Paltz, and is a member of the piano faculty at the Mannes College of Music in New York City. He is the founder and Artistic Director of the International Festival-Institute PianoSummer at New Paltz, a three-week-long, intensive training program for advanced piano students that attracts major young talents from all over the world.

Mr. Feltsman’s extensive discography has been released on the Melodiya, Sony Classical, Musical Heritage Society, and Nimbus labels. His discography includes eight albums of clavier works of J.S. Bach, recordings of Beethoven’s last five piano sonatas and of the Moonlight, Pathetique and Appasionata  Sonatas, solo piano works of Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, Liszt, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Messiaen and Silvestrov, as well as concerti by Bach, Brahms, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, and Prokofiev.  His most recent recording is a release of Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 3 with the Russian National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Mikhail Pletnev from a November 1992 performance at the Bolshoi Hall of Moscow Conservatory, alongside a recording of Rachmaninoff’s Elegy and Six Preludes made in November 2010.

Website: http://www.feltsman.com
Video: Chopin F minor Ballade
Video: Bach Partita in c minor
Video: Feltsman at Aspen
Video: additional Feltsman videos

Critical Acclaim

New York Times
Paul Griffiths

Rachmaninoff - Paganini Variations
Kirov Orchestra, Valery Gergiev conducting

"A lot of credit has to go to the piano soloist, Vladimir Feltsman, who was phenomenally alert and dexterous, brilliant in color, neat in shaping, exact at high speed and all the time utterly relaxed, as if he could let his fingers just get along with the job by themselves."

Seattle Times
Melinda Bargreen

"On Thursday night, there was only one owner of Benaroya Hall, and it was Vladimir Feltsman."

"Feltsman ignited the Rachmaninoff like a rocket. Taut, intense, practically airborne with energy, he attacked the keyboard in a hailstorm of notes of incredible clarity and focus. Usually a model of classical restraint at the keyboard, Feltsman looked as if he might levitate right off the piano bench during most of the third movement."

Chicago Tribune
By Larry Johnson

"To hear one of the towering works of musical literature played with this level of technical finish and interpretive insight was a rare treat indeed. Vladimir Feltsman is clearly one of the supreme Bach keyboard exponents of our time."