Lev Vinocour, piano
a biography

Lev Vinocour has left audiences and critics throughout the world in "no doubt that he is one of the finest piano virtuosi of our time". "Dazzling", "unsurpassable", "phenomenal", have become commonplace epithets for critics attempting to put into words his literally breath-taking musicianship.

But Vinocour's pianistic art does not rely on the cliché-ridden type of romantic piano virtuosity. A German critic recently wrote about his performance of Chopin's Etudes: "what Vinocour unveils is so unusual and new, that even a connoisseur of these works meets with a listening experience of a very special sort". It is not surprising, therefore, that he has been likened on several occasions to such pianistic giants as Martha Argerich and Friedrich GuIda. Born in St. Petersburg and Moscow Conservatoire trained, he first came to the attention of the musical world through a long string of international competition successes. Since that time, Lev Vinocour has been a regular soloist on many of the major platforms throughout all continents.

He moved to the West in 1993 as Junior Fellow in Keyboard Studies at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, Great Britain and subsequently became a student of the famous pedagogue Karl–Ulrich Schnabel at the prestigious “Fondazione Internazionale per il Pianoforte" on the Lake of Como in Italy. He made his début at the age of thirteen with the Leningrad Philharmonic and Evgeny Mravinsky, the first of many renowned conductors with whom he was to appear. More recently he has performed under the baton of such conductors as Mikhail Pletnev, Semyon Bychkov, Cristian Mandeal, Libor Pesek, Vladimir Fedoseyev, Markus Stenz and Eliahu Inbal. Since settling in Germany in 1996, Lev Vinocour has enjoyed particularly close links with the Radio Symphony Orchestra of Cologne, the Czech Philharmonic Prague, the "Georges Enesco" Philharmonic Bucharest and the Tchaikovsky ¬- Symphony Orchestra Moscow.

Lev Vinocour has been a frequent guest at most German and many major European festivals. Highlights have included appearances at the Schleswig-Holstein-Musikfestival, MDR-¬Musiksommer, Rheingau-Festival, the Schubertiade, Festival Van Vlaanderen, Klavierfestival Ruhr, Yokohama Piano Festival, Schumannfest Düsseldorf, Rheinisches Musikfest, Kissinger Musiksommer, Festival lntemational de Luxembourg in Echternach and Settimani Musicali di Ancona to name just a few.

As a chamber musician he is a regular partner of the Tokyo String Quartet and their mutually warm relationship has led to rapturous receptions from audiences and critics alike. Recent performances were described as “an hour of glory for chamber music", "exemplary", "seamless music making".

In the capacity of recitalist, chamber musician and concerto soloist, Mr. Vinocour has broadcast extensively through the mediums of television and radio throughout the world. His earlier studio recordings include Chopin's Complete Etudes, Tchaikovsky's "The Seasons", a double CD album of the Complete Piano Transcriptions by Prokofiev, and virtuoso Paraphrases on the works of Johann Strauss II. To quote just a few critics: "fascinating playing from outstanding Russian pianist" (Gramophone); “undoubtedly Vinocour belongs to the pianistic élite" (Musik und Theater, Zürich); “stylistically immaculate" (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung); "extraordinary scintillating interpretation" (Scherzo, Barcelona); “it is hard to imagine greater poetry and tenderness” (Le Monde de la Musique).

A triple CD album of Schumann‘s Complete Etudes was awarded the ''Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik'' in 2003. His 2005 Liszt project in Weimar, which involved 14 different recital programmes in the space of as many weeks, received the highest possible praise. This Herculean venture had hitherto been considered impossible.

The last decade has seen Mr. Vinocour devoting an increasing amount of his time to the works of Peter Tchaikovsky. Alongside countless concert performances of the concerti, chamber and solo music, Lev Vinocour has recorded several CDs. The most recent, released in 2008 by Sony / RCA Red Seal to great critical acclaim, contains two piano suites from the ballet „Sleeping beauty“. He is also involved in Schott's New Edition of the Complete Works of Peter Tchaikovsky, a joint venture between the Russian and German Academies of Science. In recognition of this, Lev Vinocour was made an Honorary Member of the International Tchaikovsky Society in 2007, an honour which he shares with Claudio Abbado and Mikhail Pletnev.

In the same year, he created another musical sensation with performances of his own reconstruction and orchestration of a piano concerto in F major, written by Robert Schumann between 1830 and 1832 but left in a disorderly and unfinished state.

His Sony / RCA Red Seal triple CD album of Schumann's Complete Works for Piano and Orchestra with the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra was released in 2010 on the eve of the 200th anniversary of this great romantic composer's birth. This collection, containing ten (!) such works, of which only three are well known, has already been identified as one of the highlights of the festivities marking this occasion.

It is this unique combination of depth of feeling, intellect, wit, intuition and virtuosity that makes Lev Vinocour's pianistic art so distinctive and has won the hearts and minds of audiences throughout the world, from Iceland to the Cape of Good Hope.



Spring 2010 

Oleg Bely Managment

Postfach 210507

42355 Wuppertal

Germany