Steinway Piano Festival: Concert by Konstantin Scherbakov 28/09/2019 at 15:00 in Sala Cristofori (Steinway & Sons)
Program
P. Tchaikovsky:
Chant elegiaque
Meditation op. 72
F. Chopin:
Fantasie op. 49 in F minor
Ballade No. 3 op. 47 in A flat major
Andante spianato and Grande polonaise brillante op. 22 in E flat major
Konstantin Scherbakov
Russian pianist, Konstantin Scherbakov, was a child prodigy, first playing the piano at the age of five and then making his debut with an orchestra at eleven in a performance of the Beethoven First Piano Concerto. He later moved to Moscow to study at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory where he was mentored chiefly by the legendary teacher Lev Naumov, whose assistant he later became. Scherbakov won the 1983 (first) Rachmaninov Competition and followed that victory with winning an array of prizes at prestigious international competitions in Montreal, Bolzano, Rome and Zürich. Scherbakov steadily built his career in the former Soviet Union, where he performed with all the leading orchestras and played recitals in more than a hundred cities. Hailed by critics at the Lucerne Festival as a modern Rachmaninov, he launched his international career in 1990 at the 20th Chamber Music Festival of Asolo, Italy, where he performed the complete Sergei Rachmaninov works for piano solo in four recitals, to the manifest approval of Sviatoslav Richter. In 1992 he and his family relocated to Switzerland and thereafter his career had a rather meteoric rise. Scherbakov is among the most ubiquitous and often-recorded pianists before the public today. The range of his repertoryis vast and demanding, both technically and interpretively: he has recorded (or is in the process of recording) the complete solo piano outputs of Leopold Godowsky, Shostakovich and Ottorino Respighi; the complete piano/orchestral works of Medtner, Tchaikovsky, Respighi and Scriabin; he recorded and played in concerts other large projects including the complete Franz Liszt piano transcriptions of the Beethoven symphonies. His repertory also includes such disparate composers as Domenico Scarlatti, Lyapunov and Poulenc. In addition to recitals, orchestral performances, world wide tours, and televised and broadcast performances throughout Europe, his concert activity has brought participation in major festivals, such as Frankfurt, Bregenz, Bodensee, Luzern, Klavier-Festival Ruhr, Bad Kissingen, Schubertiade Feldkirch and Salzburg, among others. Scherbakov has made numerous recordings since 1992. Naxos signed him and his first recording, the Transcendental Etudes by Liapunov, released in 1994 on that label's sister enterprise Marco Polo. EMI introduced him, via its Debut Series, in a disc of Johann Strauss II waltz paraphrases by Max Reger, Carl Tausig, Rosental, György Cziffra and others. Boasting a phenomenal repertoire of some fifty concertos and a similar number of recital programmes, he has recorded music from Bach to Strauss and Scriabin and from Beethoven to Medtner and Respighi. He has a current commitment to record for Marco Polo the complete piano music of Leopold Godowsky. His acclaimed contribution to the Naxos Franz Liszt piano music series includes critically acclaimed performances of F. Liszt’s transcriptions of Beethoven’s Symphonies, of which the Ninth Symphony was awarded the 2005German Critics’ Prize, as well as his recording of L. Godowsky’s Sonata in E minor for Marco Polo, which was awarded the German Critics’ Prize in December 2001. Scherbakov’s recording of the 24 Preludes and Fugues of Shostakovich for Naxos received the Classical Award 2001 at Cannes. Amid his heavy concert and recording schedule, Konstantin Scherbakov joined the faculty at the Zurich Arts University in 1998. He regularly conducts master-classes in pianism and acts as juror for various prestigious piano competitions.
Organization: Steinway Piano Gallery Passadori and CremonaFiere