Dmitry Masleev

“Super-soloist” is the way France Musique introduced Dmitry Masleev when he made his debut with the Orchestre National de France at the beginning of 2020, playing the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1, the work that helped launch his international career, when he won the 2015 Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition in Moscow. Diapason described the same concert as “the Triumph of Dmitry Masleev at Radio France. Masleev delivered a soaring interpretation, with his transcendent virtuosity augmented by his delicate touch.” In the autumn of this year Dmitry makes his debuts at the Golden Hall of Musikverein and on the main stage of the Berlin Philharmonic. He returns to Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg with the Ural Philharmonic Orchestra on their second joint tour of Germany and to the Philharmonie de Paris with a solo recital featuring recently discovered early works of Dmitry Shostakovich, which the young pianist world-premiered in July 2020 in a virtual concert presented by the International Shostakovich Festival in Gohrisch and broadcast by ARTE, Mitteldeutsche Rundfunk, and Deutsche Grammophon. Dmitry’s tour plans for the 2020-21 season also include multiple performances at René Martin’s Moments Musicaux Festival at La Baule and at the Verbier Festival’s residence at Schloss Elmau. His Verbier Festival debut in 2019 was among many of his performances broadcast on Medici TV to thousands of people worldwide. In the recent seasons Dmitry has also been invited to perform at the Lucerne Festival, Klavierfestival Ruhr, as well as at the La Roque d’Anthéron, Montreux, Rheingau, Bad Kissingen, Bodensee, and Stars of the White Nights festivals. Dmitry particularly appreciates festivals for the opportunities to play chamber music. His regular partners include Boris Berezovsky, who has described him as “a discovery and a brilliant pianist”, Marc Bouchkov, Alexander Ramm, and the Borodin Quartet. Later in the season Dmitry returns to Basel, where he debuted in 2016, jumping in at the last minute for the indisposed Maurizio Pollini. This time, he will perform with the Sinfonieorchester Basel under the direction of Ariane Mathiakh with Rachmaninov’s Variations on the Theme of Paganini. Dmitry’s orchestral collaborations also include the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra (Robert Trevino), Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France (Mikko Franck), Orchestre National de Lyon (Tan Dun), Bamberg Orchestra (Christoph Eschenbach), and Orquestra Cadaqués (David Robertson). Dmitry continues to perform regularly throughout Russia, appearing in recital and with orchestras, including the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Yuri Simonov, at the Tchaikovsky Hall, the Grand Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, the Mariinsky Concert Hall, and other venues. Rising to the challenge of Covid 19 crisis, Dmitry has been actively collaborating with the Moscow Philharmonic Society, offering numerous performances via their digital concert hall, reaching hundreds of thousands of people worldwide at the time of great physical, emotional and economic difficulties. His recent media activities also include the release of his second album, Rapid Movement, on Russia’s legendary label Melodia, famous for its recordings of Richter, Gilels, Davidovich and other great Russian pianists. Recorded with Siberian State Symphony and VladimirLande, it features Shostakovich Piano Concerto No. 1 alongside the Jazz Suite by Alexander Tsfasman and the Piano Concerto No. 2 by a contemporary Russian composer Nikolai Kapustin (Dmitry’s performance of Kapustin’s Toccatina has over 350,000 views on YouTube). Shostakovich and Tsfasman enjoyed an artistic friendship: Tsfasman consulted with Shostakovich on the orchestration of his themes, while Shostakovich sought his opinion on his own forays into jazz. Mr. Masleev’s previous album, launched with a performance at the recital hall of the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and featuring solo and orchestral repertoire, has made the Spotify Top Classical 2017 charts and received the prestigious German Critics’ Prize (Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik) in the solo piano category, where it was nominated alongside Krystian Zimerman’s Schubert album (DG). “One can only revel in the poetic spontaneity of this Scarlatti recording, not least because of the brilliance, precision and ease of Masleev’s playing” (Westdeutsche Rundfunk). Within the first six months of the release, Mr. Masleev’s own arrangement of Shostakovich’s Elegy from the Ballet Suite No. 3 has been downloaded on iTunes over 43,000 times. In acknowledgement of these achievements, ARTE’s primetime TV show Stars von Morgen, hosted by Rolando Villazon, featured Dmitry Masleev as the pianist to watch. “It is fascinating to witness his artistic development. One cannot be taught to play like this. It takes a lot of natural musicality… Masleev shows how within a small space one can open up an entire cosmos of a soul. That is great art and that is what you always want and rarely get as a listener: watching the artist looking for himself and listening to him find it,” wrote Helmut Mauró in Süddeutsche Zeitung in 2019 North America fell in love with Dmitry Masleev when he made his Carnegie Hall recital debut at the Isaac Stern Auditorium in January 2017 and repeated the same program at Toronto’s Koerner Hall in March. In 2018, he toured coast-to-coast with the Moscow State Symphony and Pavel Kogan. Annual visits to South America have established Dmitry as an audience favorite in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, and Ecuador. This season Dmitry collaborates with Allegro HD, the main arts and culture TV network of the continent, to deliver music to his fans despite the travel restrictions. Dmitry regularly performs in the Asian capitals, both with orchestras such as Seoul Philharmonic, New Japanese Philharmonic, and National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan, as well as in recital. A solo recital tour of China and Japan is planned for this season, along with a return to Taipei for a performance with NSO Taiwan and Joshua Weilerstein. Born and raised in Ulan-Ude (a Siberian town between Lake Baikal and the Mongolian border), Dmitry was educated at the Moscow Conservatory in the class of Professor Mikhail Petukhov, and at the International Music Academy at Lake Como.