About
Pianist and conductor Vladimir Feltsman is one of the most versatile and constantly interesting musicians of our time. His vast repertoire encompasses music from the Baroque to 21st-century composers. He has appeared with all the major American orchestras and on the most prestigious musical stages and festivals worldwide.
In the 2015-16 season Feltsman played recitals in several U.S. cities including Washington, D.C. as well as abroad. Highlights of his 2014-15 season included concerto appearances with the Russian State Symphony on tour in the U.S., as well as concerts in Palm Beach, at Duke University, at Ravinia, the Aspen Music Festival and at Summerfest in La Jolla. 2016-17 season included concerts in Naples FL. Montevideo, Mexico City, St. Petersburg and Moscow. During summer of 2017 Mr. Feltsman will return to Aspen and Ravinia Festivals and will play a recital at Verbier Festival.
Mr. Feltsman expressed his lifelong devotion to the music of J.S. Bach in a cycle of concerts, which presented the major clavier works of the composer and spanned four consecutive seasons (1992-1996) at the 92nd Street Y in New York. His more recent project, Masterpieces of the Russian Underground, unfolded a panorama of Russian contemporary music through an unprecedented survey of piano and chamber works by fourteen different composers from Shostakovich to the present day and was presented by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in January 2003 with great success. Mr. Feltsman served as Artistic Director for this project as well as performing in most of the pieces presented during the three concerts cycle. The programs included a number of world and North American premieres and were also presented in Portland, Oregon and in Tucson, Arizona at the University of Arizona. In the fall of 2006, Mr. Feltsman performed all Mozart Piano Sonatas in New York at the Mannes School of Music and NYU’s Tisch Center presented by New School on a specially built replica of the Walter fortepiano.
Born in Moscow in 1952, Mr. Feltsman debuted with the Moscow Philharmonic at age 11. In 1969, he entered the Moscow Tchaikovsky State Conservatory of Music to study piano under the guidance of Professor Jacob Flier. He also studied conducting at both the Moscow and Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) Conservatories. In 1971, Mr. Feltsman won the Grand Prix at the Marguerite Long International Piano Competition in Paris; extensive touring throughout the former Soviet Union, Europe and Japan followed this.
In 1979, because of his growing discontent with the restrictions on artistic freedom under the Soviet regime, Mr. Feltsman signaled his intention to emigrate by applying for an exit visa. In response, he was immediately banned from performing in public and his recordings were suppressed. After eight years of virtual artistic exile, he was finally granted permission to leave the Soviet Union. Upon his arrival in the United States in 1987, Mr. Feltsman was warmly greeted at the White House, where he performed his first recital in North America. That same year, his debut at Carnegie Hall established him as a major pianist on the American and international scene.
A dedicated educator of young musicians, Mr. Feltsman holds the Distinguished Chair of Professor of Piano at the State University of New York, New Paltz, and is a member of the piano faculty at the Mannes College of Music in New York City. He is the founder and Artistic Director of the International Festival-Institute PianoSummer at New Paltz, a three-week-long, intensive training program for advanced piano students that attracts major young talents from all over the world. In 2012 Vladimir and his wife Haewon established the Feltsman Piano Foundation that helps young musician to realize their potential and advance their careers.
Mr. Feltsman’s extensive discography has been released on the Sony Classical, Musical Heritage, Nimbus, and Melodiya labels includes more than 50 CD’s and is expanding. He completed recently a recording of all Schubert Sonatas and the works by Schumann for Nimbus. Feltsman’s discography includes all major clavier works of J.S. Bach; recordings of Beethoven’s last five piano sonatas, the Moonlight, Pathetique and Appasionata Sonatas and Diabelli Variations; solo piano works of Haydn, Chopin, Liszt, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Scriabin, Mussorgsky, Messiaen and Silvestrov; as well as concerti by Bach, Brahms, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, and Prokofiev. His most recent recording with orchestra is a release of Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 3 with the Russian National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Mikhail Pletnev from a November 1992 performance at the Bolshoi Hall of Moscow Conservatory. Since 2011 the Nimbus label has released twenty albums by Mr. Feltsman of works by Bach, Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Scriabin, Tchaikovsky, Liszt, Haydn, Schubert, Schumann and Schnittke.