CSOradio
CSOtv
CSOradio
From one iconic Russian artist to another: This season, pianist Evgeny Kissin is marking the 50th anniversary of the death of composer Dmitri Shostakovich, with a series of chamber-music concerts he’s informally calling the Shostakovich Project.
Some of the concerts are solo recitals, which will be the case in Chicago, when he appears in a SCP Piano event May 11. For other performances, fellow current-day titans of classical music will join him. For instance, in May at Carnegie Hall, along with a solo recital on May 17, Kissin will perform Shostakovich’s violin, viola and cello sonatas on May 28 with Gidon Kremer, Maxim Rysanov and Gautier Capuçon, respectively.
In a third program on May 31, Kissin will present a selection of Shostakovich’s chamber works, featuring the Four Verses of Captain Lebyadkin and From Jewish Folk Poetry song cycles, along with the composer’s Piano Quintet and his Piano Trio No. 2. Joining Kissin will be violinist Gidon Kremer, cellist Giedrė Dirvanauskaitė, and vocalists Susanna Phillips, Sasha Cooke, Brandon Jovanovich and Alexander Roslavets.
Kissin, who tours constantly, admits that he would like to perform more chamber music. "I don’t play much with ensembles. I’ve played some very beautiful things in the past, with extraordinary musicians: Isaac Stern, Martha Argerich, Alexander Kniazev, Thomas Quasthoff, Yuri Bashmet," he recalled in an interview with the site iplaythepiano.com. "There are some pieces that I would currently like to play, simply because I adore them. First of all, Tchaikovsky’s A Minor Trio, which I have never performed but have always admired — I played it recently in Silvia Marcovici and Alexander Kniazev’s company, with Joshua Bell and Misha Maisky.
"I’m also thinking of Mendelssohn’s Trio in D Minor, which I played about 15 years ago in Switzerland with Isaac Stern and Natalia Gutman. I went on tour with Dmitri Hvorostovsky, playing the lieder of Tchaikovsky, Medtner and Rachmaninov."
But he prefers to perform alone. “I must admit that I prefer to play solo ... simply because that way I play more,” he said. "I have the opportunity to play the piano more. When I play with an orchestra or with chamber music ensembles, I sometimes feel frustrated; it’s my partners who get to play these magnificent themes. I accompany them, but I’m sad to not be playing this marvelous material myself.
"Therefore, I prefer to play alone, for this reason, but also because when I play solo, everything depends entirely and solely on me. Everything’s in my hands, quite literally. Each season, I force myself to play pieces that I have not previously played in public, or played very rarely. Up until recently, for example, I had only played Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 8 once in public — it was in 1990, and I was quite young. I did my best, and it was recorded for television broadcast, but I’m not completely satisfied with that performance today. I think, musically speaking, that I could do better."
Next season, Kissin will return to Chicago for another SCP Piano recital (on May 17, 2026), but he also will join the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for two concerts April 16 and 18, conducted by Andrey Boreyko, in which Kissin will perform three concertos by Scriabin, Rimsky-Korsakov and Prokofiev (No. 1). Subscription tickets are now on sale. Single tickets go on sale in August. (Subscribers receive priority access to the Kissin/CSO concerts.)
