Grammy Award-winning pianist Daniil Trifonov (dan-EEL TREE-fon-ov) is a solo artist, champion of the concerto repertoire, chamber and vocal collaborator, and composer. Combining consummate technique with rare sensitivity and depth, his performances are a perpetual source of wonder to audiences and critics alike. He won the Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Solo Album of 2018 with Transcendental, the Liszt collection that marked his third title as an exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist.
Trifonov’s 2025-26 season includes three performances at Carnegie Hall. He first reunites with German baritone Matthias Goerne for a performance of Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin, as the culmination of their North American tour of Schubert’s great song cycles that also sees them perform Schwanengesang in Québec City and Boston, and Winterreise in Toronto, Washington, DC, and Dallas. After the North American performances, Trifonov and Goerne tour the cycles to multiple German and Austrian cities, as well as to Paris in the spring. In November, Trifonov returns to Carnegie Hall in the company of Cristian Mǎcelaru and the Orchestre National de France for two great French piano concertos: Saint-Saëns’s Second and Ravel’s jazz-inflected Piano Concerto in G. Finally, in December, Trifonov’s third Carnegie Hall appearance of the season is a mainstage solo recital, with the same program performed throughout the season in both the U.S. and Europe. Other season highlights for Trifonov include a short duo tour in Sweden and Austria with violinist Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider; a reprise of Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto with the Cleveland Orchestra and Music Director Franz Welser-Möst, as well as three performances of the same work with the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia under the baton of Daniel Harding; and Beethoven’s Second Piano Concerto with both the Cincinnati Symphony led by Macelaru and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra – where Trifonov served as 2024-25 artist-in-residence – led by Esa-Pekka Salonen.
Trifonov’s existing Deutsche Grammophon discography includes 2024’s My American Story: North, which received the UK’s Presto Music Award; the Grammy-nominated live recording of his Carnegie recital debut; Chopin Evocations; Silver Age, for which he received Opus Klassik’s Instrumentalist of the Year/Piano award; the best-selling, Grammy-nominated double album Bach: The Art of Life; and three volumes of Rachmaninov works with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, of which two received Grammy nominations and the third won BBC Music’s 2019 Concerto Recording of the Year. Named Gramophone’s 2016 Artist of the Year and Musical America’s 2019 Artist of the Year, Trifonov was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government in 2021.
During the 2010-11 season, Trifonov won medals at three of the music world’s most prestigious competitions: Third Prize in Warsaw’s Chopin Competition, First Prize in Tel Aviv’s Rubinstein Competition, and both First Prize and Grand Prix in Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Competition. He studied with Sergei Babayan at the Cleveland Institute of Music.
November 2025
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