Daniil Trifonov
March 5, 1991 - Nizhniy Novgorod
© Dario Acosta / Deutsche Grammophon
Daniil Trifonov is one of today’s leading classical virtuosos, a pianist in a league of his own. Find his music on medici.tv!
Born in Nizhniy Novgorod in March 1991, Daniil Trifonov has emerged as one of the most talked-about young musicians in the world. His reputation for outstanding performances, musical insight and expressive intensity has already surpassed the attention he received during the 2010-2011 season when he won medals at the Chopin Competition in Warsaw (Third Prize), the Rubinstein Competition in Tel Aviv (First Prize), and the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow (First Prize and Grand Prix, an additional honor bestowed on the best overall competitor in any category). In 2013, he was also awarded the prestigious Franco Abbiati Prize for Best Instrumental Soloist by Italy’s foremost music critics. Prior to that, Trifonov received awards at the Scriabin Competition of Moscow and at the San Marino International competition and received a Guzik Foundation Career Grant in 2009.
Recent and upcoming concerto highlights include the Berlin Philharmonic with Sir Simon Rattle, Vienna Philharmonic with Andris Nelsons, London Symphony and Mariinsky Orchestras, Israel Philharmonic with Zubin Mehta, Philharmonia Orchestra with Lorin Maazel, Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra with Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Philadelphia Orchestra with Cristian Macelaru, San Francisco Symphony and Minnesota Orchestra with Osmo Vanska, Russian National Orchestra with Mikhail Pletnev, New York Philharmonic with Alan Gilbert, Cleveland Orchestra with Jim Gaffigan, Boston Symphony with Giancarlo Guerrero, Chicago Symphony and Royal Philharmonic with Charles Dutoit, Orchestra Nazionale di Santa Cecilia with Mark Elder, Oslo Philharmonic with Petrenko and Danish Radio Symphony with Gianandrea Noseda. In 2017-2018, he performed throughout Germany with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Vladimir Jurowski, as well as touring with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and Daniele Gatti, to perform in Vienna, Prague, Dresden, and Paris.
In the 2016-2017 season, Trifonov was Capell-Virtuoso with the Staatskapelle Dresden, which included concerts at the BBC Proms, Salzburg Easter Festival, and Vienna Musikverein, and he performed the complete Rachmaninov Piano Concerto cycle with the Mariinsky Orchestra and Munich Philharmonic with Gergiev. Trifonov appeared as soloist with orchestras including the Berliner Philharmoniker, Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, The Cleveland Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Filarmonica della Scala, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Rotterdam Philharmonic, and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and gave his debut performances in Australia with the Sydney, Melbourne, and West Australian Symphony Orchestras. In 2016, he was Artist of the Year at the Gramophone Awards and was also awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society Award in the Instrumentalist category. The same year, Trifonov released an album of the Complete Études for piano by Liszt (Gramophone), which was listed by The New York Times as the “Best Classical Music Recording of 2016” and he held the number four position on Billboard Top Classical Albums chart. The following year, Trifonov was awarded one of the most prestigious awards in musical performance, the Herbert von Karajan Prize at the Salzburg Easter Festival.
For the season 2018-2019, the Russian pianist served as Berlin Philharmonic’s Artist-in-Residence, where he performed a solo recital and a recital of Lieder with Matthias Goerne. He later performed the Scriabin Piano Concerto with the orchestra, under the baton of Andris Nelsons, and performed a concert of chamber music in a program that included his own Piano Quintet.
In October 2021, Trifonov released the album Bach: The Art of Life on Deutsche Grammophon. He engaged in a tour of recitals centered on The Art of Fugue in Europe and a second program in the US of Prokofiev, Szymanowski, Debussy, and Brahms. Trifonov also performed all five of Beethoven’s Piano Concertos in various combinations with eight renowned orchestras from all around the world. Equally interested in more recent symphonies, being a composer himself, Trifonov gave a world premiere performance of Mason Bates’ new Piano Concerto, composed for him during the pandemic, with the co-commissiong Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, before reprising the piece in the spring with the New Jersey Symphony, Israel Philharmonic, and the other co-commissioner, the San Francisco Symphony. In 2021, Trifonov also received the Opus Klassiks Instrumentalist of the Year/Piano award for Silver Age, an album of Russian solo and orchestral piano music by Scriabin, Prokofiev, and Stravinsky. This album is the third volume of the Deutsche Grammophon series Trifonov recorded with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Nézet-Séguin.
Recent and upcoming recitals include performances at the Stern Auditorium of New York Carnegie Hall, the Washington Kennedy Center, the Boston Celebrity Series, London’s Royal Festival Hall, Barbican Centre and Wigmore Hall, the Berlin Philharmonie, the Concertgebouw Master Piano Series, the Philharmonie de Paris, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the Zurich Tonhalle, and Tokyo Opera City, amongst many others. Daniil Trifonov has also been presented by major festivals in Europe: Verbier, Lucerne, Montreux, Tivoli, Salzburg, Edinburgh, Lockenhaus, Grafenegg, La Roque d'Anthéron, Klavier Festival Ruhr; while in the USA, he appeared at the Blossom, Ravinia, and Chautauqua festivals—you can find many interviews and performances of Trifonov at Verbier Festival in our superb archive videos!
Daniil Trifonov is a noted chamber musician and performs regularly with international artists including Nicholas Angelich, Sergei Babayan, Renaud Capuçon, Gautier Capuçon, Yuri Bashmet, Vilde Frang, and the Pavel Haas Quartet.
Daniil Trifonov began his musical studies at the age of five. He studied at the Moscow Gnessin School of Music in the class of Tatiana Zelikman (2000-2009). From 2006 to 2009, he also studied composition and continues to write piano, chamber and orchestral music. When he premiered his own piano concerto in spring 2014, the Cleveland Plain Dealer commented, "Even having seen it, one cannot quite believe it. Such is the artistry of pianist-composer Daniil Trifonov''. Since 2009, he has studied piano at the Cleveland Institute of Music in the class of Sergei Babayan.
In February 2013, Deutsche Grammophon announced the signing of an exclusive recording agreement with Daniil Trifonov. His first recording as an exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist (The Carnegie Recital) won a Grammy Award nomination. His latest release, Transcendental, was awarded the ECHO Klassik 2017 award for Best Solo Recording of piano music written in the 19th century. His discography also includes a recording of Rachmaninov’s Variations with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Nézet-Séguin, as well as Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No.1 with Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra, released on the Mariinsky label in 2012. His first CD was released on Decca in 2011, featuring a selection of Chopin solo works.