Van Cliburn gold medalist, Alexander Kobrin, to perform at OSU

Thursday, January 19, 2017

Renowned pianist Alexander Kobrin, gold medal winner of the Twelfth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2005, will visit the OSU campus to play a solo recital featuring works by Beethoven and Schumann at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 28, in the Concert Hall of the Seretean Center for the Performing Arts. On Friday, Jan. 27, Kobrin will present a master class with OSU student performers in the Seretean Center Choir Room 123 from 4 - 6 p.m.

Called the “Van Cliburn of today” by the BBC, Kobrin has earned a place at the forefront of today's performing musicians. His prize-winning performances have been praised for their brilliant technique, musicality, and emotional engagement with the audience. The New York Times has called Kobrin a “fastidious guide to Schumann’s otherworldly visions, pointing out hunters, flowers, haunted corners and friendly bowers, all captured in richly characterized vignettes.” Following Kobrin’s performance of Second Piano Concerto by Johannes Brahms with the Syracuse Symphony, a critic wrote, “This was a performance that will be revered and remembered as a landmark of the regeneration of exceptional classical music in Central New York.”

In addition to Kobrin’s Cliburn competition win, his numerous successes in competitions include top prizes at the Busoni International Piano Competition, Hamamatsu International Piano Competition, Scottish International Piano Competition in Glasgow, and third prize at the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw.

Kobrin has performed with many of the world’s great orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, Tokyo Philharmonic, Russian National Orchestra, Belgrade Philharmonic, English Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra Verdi, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Moscow Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Dallas Symphony, Berliner Symphony, Chicago Sinfonietta, Swedish Radio Symphony, Birmingham Symphony, Warsaw Philharmonic and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. He has collaborated with celebrated conductors, including Mikhail Pletnev, Mikhail Jurovsky, Mark Elder, Vassiliy Sinaisky, James Conlon, Claus Peter Flor, Alexander Lazarev, Vassiliy Petrenko and Yuri Bashmet.

Kobrin has appeared in recital at major halls worldwide, including the Louvre Auditorium and Salle Cortot in Paris, Albert Hall and Wigmore Hall in London, Munich Herkulesaal and Berliner Filarmonia Hall in Germany, the Kennedy Centre in Washington, Avery Fisher Hall in New York, the Great Hall at the Moscow Conservatoire, Sheung Wan Civic Centre in Hong Kong, as well as Sala Verdi in Milan and many others. His past recital performances have included Bass Hall for the Cliburn Series, the Washington Performing Arts Society, La Roque d'Antheron, the Ravinia Festival, the Beethoven Easter Festival, Busoni Festival, the renowned Klavier-Festival Ruhr, the Festival Musique dans le Grésivaudan, the International Keyboard Institute & Festival, annual concert tours in Japan, China and Taiwan.

Though widely acclaimed as a performer, Kobrin’s teaching has been an inspiration to many students through his passion for music. He served on the faculty of the Gnessin's Academy of Music from 2003 to 2010. He is currently the L. Rexford Whiddon Distinguished Chair in Piano at the Schwob School of Music at Columbus State University. In 2013, he joined the Artist Faculty of the Steinhardt School of Piano Studies at New York University. In fall 2017, he will join the piano faculty at the renowned Eastman School of Music in New York.

Kobrin has released recordings on the Harmonia Mundi, Quartz, and Centaur labels, covering a wide swath of piano literature. Gramophone Magazine raved about his Cliburn competition release on Harmonia Mundi, writing that …“in (Rachmaninoff’s) Second Sonata (played in the 1931 revision), despite fire-storms of virtuosity, there is always room for everything to tell and Kobrin achieves a hypnotic sense of the music’s dark necromancy.”

Born in 1980 in Moscow, Korbrin was enrolled in the world-famous Gnessin Special School of Music at the age of five, after which he attended the prestigious Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatoire.

Admission to the recital is $10 for adults and $7 for students. The master class is free and open to the public. Kobrin’s visit was made possible through the generosity of the Fae Rawdon Norris Endowment for the Humanities. For more information about this event, please call the OSU Music Department office at 405-744-8998.