Daniil Trifonov

Daniil Olegovich Trifonov (Дании́л Оле́гович Три́фонов; born 5 March 1991) is a Russian pianist and composer.

Trifonov was born in Nizhny Novgorod, Soviet Union on 5 March 1991, the only child of a composer father and a music teacher mother.

He began studying the piano at the age of five, and gave his first solo concert at seven.

When Trifonov was eight years old, he gave his first performance with an orchestra in a Mozart concerto, losing one of his baby teeth during the performance.

In 2000, he began studying with Tatiana Zelikman at the Gnessin School of Music in Moscow.

In 2000, the family moved to Moscow, and Trifonov began studying under Tatiana Zelikman at the Gnessin School of Music.

He also studied composition with Vladimir Dovgan from 2006 to 2009.

In 2006, at the age of 15, Trifonov won third prize in the Moscow International F. Chopin Competition for Young Pianists held in Beijing, China.

At the age of 17, in 2008, Trifonov won Fifth Prize at the 4th International Scriabin Competition in Moscow, and First Prize at the 3rd International Piano Competition of San Marino, where he also received the Special Prize for the best performance of Chick Corea’s composition "Afterthought".

From 2009 to 2015, Trifonov studied with Sergei Babayan at the Cleveland Institute of Music.

In 2009, at the recommendation of Tatiana Zelikman, Trifonov commenced studies with Sergei Babayan at the Cleveland Institute of Music, receiving an Artist Certificate in 2013 and an Artist Diploma in 2015.

Of his student, Babayan said: "Having a rare diamond like Daniil Trifonov in my studio is a huge responsibility and happiness. Just like for a parent realizing that his child is more than very special, [...] I wouldn't want to use too strong words, but I think there are very few musicians like Daniil in the world. He is the music for me."

While at the Cleveland Institute of Music, he was also a composition student of Keith Fitch.

In 2010 he performed in the Rathausplatz, Vienna (Vienna City Hall Square) as one of seven finalists of the Eurovision Young Musicians.

In 2010, Trifonov became a medalist of the distinguished XVI International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw,

where he won Third Prize and the Special Prize of Polish Radio for the best mazurka performance.

In the final round of the competition, he was given the maximum score by jury members Nelson Freire and Martha Argerich.

In 2011, he won the First Prize and Grand Prix at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in addition to the First Prize at the Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition, and in 2010 was a prizewinner at the International Chopin Piano Competition.

Later, in 2011, Argerich told the Financial Times that Trifonov had "everything and more", adding: "What he does with his hands is technically incredible. It’s also his touch – he has tenderness and also the demonic element. I never heard anything like that".

In May 2011, Trifonov won the First Prize at the XIII Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition in Tel Aviv, winning also the Pnina Salzman Prize for the Best Performer of a Chopin piece, the Prize for the Best Performer of Chamber Music and the Audience Favorite Prize.

A few weeks after winning the Rubinstein Competition, Trifonov was awarded the First Prize, Gold Medal, and Grand Prix at the XIV International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.

Trifonov also won the Audience Award and the Award for the Best Performance of a Chamber Concerto.

In a statement released after Trifonov's winning of the Tchaikovsky competition, Cleveland Institute of Music President Joel Smirnoff wrote: "In Mr. Trifonov, we are seeing the emergence of a major artistic interpreter of the piano literature. One must marvel at his remarkable performances in the recent Chopin, Rubinstein, and Tchaikovsky competitions, and we look forward in the coming years to hearing and watching him share his special, expressive and virtuosic talents with the greater world."

For the twelve months following the competition, Trifonov performed some 85 concerts; he received 150 offers, but said "at my age, 150 would be suicidal".

One of these concerts took place shortly after the Tchaikovsky competition, in July 2011: Trifonov played a recital in Mannes School of Music as part of the International Keyboard Institute and Festival.

Writing in The New York Times, Anthony Tommasini noted that Trifonov "has scintillating technique and a virtuosic flair", but is "also a thoughtful artist and, when so moved, he can play with soft-spoken delicacy, not what you associate with competition conquerors".

In October, in a review of a concert where Trifonov performed Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra conducted by Valery Gergiev at George Mason University's Center for the Arts, Anne Midgette of The Washington Post called Trifonov's playing "freakishly brilliant", but added that it wasn't always "easy or even enjoyable to hear" and left her "enervated and slightly disturbed".

Midgette noted that "throughout the piece, routine patches or banging (was it a bad piano?) would yield to moments of startling precision that offered unexpected insights. Toward the end of the first movement, he played with such intensity that it seemed as if this moment was the greatest or most powerful thing that one could possibly experience. At that moment, for this 20-year-old pianist, it was."

However, of Trifonov's encore, a Chopin Grande valse brillante, Midgette wrote that it "sealed the deal" that Trifonov "is a major artist in the making".

She added that Trifonov's rubato "was a byproduct of the music rather than something inflicted on it, and the waltz’s repeating theme, which often feels dutiful and even hackneyed by its final iterations, sounded new, natural, self-evident and delightful each time he played it".

Three days later, Trifonov made his Carnegie Hall debut in the same concerto with the same orchestra and conductor: James R. Oestreich of The New York Times was critical of the performance: "Mr. Trifonov’s performance often seemed frenetic rather than magisterial. And he tended to offset extremely fast playing with extremely slow, more maundering than meditative: a manic-depressive approach that might be appropriate to Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique Symphony but not to this vital concerto."

However, Oestreich noted that in Trifonov's two encores, the Chopin Grande valse brillante in E-flat major (Op. 18) and Liszt's "La campanella", the pianist "showed greater sensitivity, taste and imagination".

In November, Trifonov performed a sold-out recital at the Cleveland Institute of Music.

In 2013, Trifonov signed a recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon; his first album for the label, a live recording of his debut solo recital at Carnegie Hall, was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Classical Instrumental Solo.

Described by The Globe and Mail as "arguably today's leading classical virtuoso" and by The Times as "without question the most astounding pianist of our age", Trifonov's honors include a Grammy Award win in 2018 and the Gramophone Classical Music Awards' Artist of the Year Award in 2016.

The New York Times has noted that "few artists have burst onto the classical music scene in recent years with the incandescence" of Trifonov.

He has performed as soloist with such orchestras as the Philadelphia Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Montreal Symphony Orchestra, Houston Symphony and the Munich Philharmonic, and has given solo recitals in such venues as Royal Festival Hall, Carnegie Hall, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Berliner Philharmonie, Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Concertgebouw, and the Seoul Arts Center.

Born in Nizhny Novgorod, Trifonov began studying piano at the age of five and performed in his first solo recital at the age of seven.

He later won a Grammy in 2018 for an album of the complete transcendental études for piano by Franz Liszt.

His albums have appeared on international record chart rankings, with seven ranking on Billboard Top Classical Album charts.