Mischa Maisky

Born in Riga, Latvia, in 1948, Mischa Maisky began his training at the conservatoire in his home town before going on to the St Petersburg Conservatory. Hailed as “the Rostropovich of the future” after his 1965 debut with the St Petersburg Philharmonic, he won the Tchaikovsky Competition the following year and emigrated to Israel in 1971.

Winner of the Gaspar Cassadó Prize in 1973, he made his debut with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in New York under William Steinberg, and was given an 18th-century Montagnana cello by an anonymous admirer. He still plays it today.

He is the only cellist to have studied with both of the instrument’s great masters, Mstislav Rostropovich and Gregor Piatigorsky. “One of the most outstanding talents of the younger generation of cellists. His playing combines poetry and exquisite sensitivity with great temperament and brilliant technique” (Rostropovich).

A passionate chamber musician, Mischa Maisky performs with Radu Lupu, Yuri Bashmet, Maxim Vengerov, Nelson Freire and Gidon Kremer, with whom he recorded Brahms’s Double Concerto with the Vienna Philharmonic and Leonard Bernstein (DG, also on video). He has also worked with Vladimir Ashkenazy, Daniel Barenboim, Myung-Whun Chung, Zubin Mehta and Giuseppe Sinopoli. His partnership with Martha Argerich is a particularly close one: the duo celebrated fifty years on stage together in 2025.

Over the course of his career, Mischa Maisky has appeared with many orchestras, including the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Vienna Philharmonic, the Israel Philharmonic, the Orchestre de Paris, the Russian National Orchestra, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Dresden Philharmonic, the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI, the Concertgebouw Chamber Orchestra, the St Petersburg Philharmonic and Kremerata Baltica.

His long and distinguished career has brought him numerous honours, among them a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 46th Istanbul Music Festival in 2018, Honorary Membership of the Royal Academy of Music in 2019, the title of Accademico Onorario of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, and an Honorary Fellowship from the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance.

His extensive discography includes Debussy and Franck (EMI) and Schubert and Schumann (Philips) with Martha Argerich. As an exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist, he has recorded Bach’s Cello Suites, which won the Record Academy Prize in Tokyo three times as well as the Grand Prix du Disque in Paris, and which he took on a world tour in 2002. His DG catalogue also includes the Bach and Beethoven sonatas with Martha Argerich (Diapason d’Or, Grammy nomination); Schumann’s Concerto with the Vienna Philharmonic and Bernstein; Haydn’s three concertos with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe; Dvořák and Bloch with the Israel Philharmonic and Bernstein; Elgar’s Concerto and Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations with the Philharmonia Orchestra and Sinopoli (Record Academy Prize, Tokyo); the albums Meditation, Adagio and Cellissimo, anthologies of short pieces; the Shostakovich concertos with the London Symphony Orchestra and Michael Tilson Thomas; Vivaldi and Boccherini concertos with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra; the Prokofiev and Myaskovsky concertos with the Russian National Orchestra and Mikhail Pletnev, recorded on his first return to Moscow; and the Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich trios with Martha Argerich and Gidon Kremer.

Recent releases on DG include an album of Russian romances in transcription; Brahms’s Piano Quartet No. 1 and Schumann’s Fantasiestücke with Martha Argerich, Gidon Kremer and Yuri Bashmet; and Dvořák’s Cello Concerto with the Berliner Philharmoniker and Zubin Mehta. On EMI, he has released Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with Martha Argerich and Renaud Capuçon.