Alexandre Kantorow
ALEXANDRE KANTOROW, 2024 Gilmore Artist
Winner of the 2024 Gilmore Artist Award – the youngest and the first French artist to do so – Alexandre Kantorow has been hailed by critics as the ‘young tsar of the piano’ (Classica) and ‘Liszt reincarnated’ (Fanfare). He has received numerous other awards and is in demand at the highest level worldwide. In 2019, at the age of 22, he was the first French pianist to win the Gold Medal at the Tchaikovsky Competition and the Grand Prix — awarded together only three times in the competition’s history. Gramophone Magazine has described him as “the real deal, a fire-breathing virtuoso with a poetic charm and innate stylistic mastery”.
Highlights of Kantorow’s recent and upcoming seasons include concerts with the Berlin Philharmonic, Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Orchestre de Paris, Philharmonia, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Boston, Pittsburgh and Montreal Symphony orchestras amongst others as well as tours with the Israel Philharmonic, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Budapest Festival and Munich Philharmonic orchestras. Conductors with whom he is performing include Barenboim, Kochanovsky, Yamada, Rouvali, Petrenko, Ivan Fischer, Sokhiev, Shani and Pappano amongst others. In the 23-24 season he was Artist-in-Residence with the Gürzenich Orchestra, Cologne.
In recital, Kantorow appears at major concert halls such as the Concertgebouw Amsterdam in their Master Pianists series, Konzerthaus Berlin, Queen Elizabeth Hall London, Philharmonie de Paris, Bozar in Brussels, Tokyo Opera City and in 2023 he makes his debut at New York’s Carnegie Hall in their Keyboard Virtuosos series. He also performs at the most prestigious festivals including La Roque d’Anthéron, Piano aux Jacobins, Verbier, Rheingau Festivals and Klavierfest Ruhr. Chamber music is one his great pleasures and he regularly performs with artists such as Victor Julien-Laferrière, Renaud Capuçon, Daniel Lozakovick and Matthias Goerne.
Kantorow records exclusively with BIS, and in 2022 he received a double Diapason d’Or for his recordings of Brahms solo works and Saint-Saëns Concerti 1 & 2, with his Brahms recording also receiving the 2021 Trophée Radio Classique. His recordings of Saint-Saëns Concerti 3-5 and his solo disc of Brahms, Bartók and Liszt also won the Diapason d’Or and the Choc de l’Année (Classica) in 2019 and 2020 respectively, and his à la Russe recital recording won numerous awards and distinctions in 2017, including Choc de l’Année (Classica), Diapason découverte (Diapason), Supersonic (Pizzicato) and CD des Doppelmonats (PianoNews).
Kantorow is a laureate of the Safran Foundation and Banque Populaire, and in 2019 was named “Musical Revelation of the Year” by the Professional Critics Association. In 2020, he won the Victoires de la Musique Classique in two categories: Recording of the Year and Instrumental Soloist of the Year. In 2021 he received the Trophée d’Année from Radio Classique.
Born in France and of French-British heritage, Kantorow studied with Pierre-Alain Volondat, Igor Lazko, Franck Braley and Rena Shereshevskaya.