Daniil Trifonov is a Russian pianist and composer, born on March 5, 1991, in Nizhny Novgorod. He is described as one of the brightest pianists of the new generation and is a prize-winner of Russian and international music competitions. In 2010 he represented Russia at the Eurovision Young Musicians competition in Vienna, where he reached the final and took third place with Frédéric Chopin's Grande Polonaise Brillante.
Trifonov began playing the piano at the age of five. From 2000 to 2009 he studied at the Gnessin Moscow Special School of Music in the class of Tatiana Zelikman. From 2006 to 2009 he also studied composition with Vladimir Dovgan and continued writing piano, chamber, and orchestral music. In 2009 he entered the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he studied with Sergei Babayan.
In the 2010-2011 season, Trifonov became a laureate of three of the most prestigious international music competitions of the time: the Chopin Competition in Warsaw, the Arthur Rubinstein Competition in Tel Aviv, and the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. Earlier, in 2008, at the age of seventeen, he had already become a prize-winner at the 4th International Scriabin Competition in Moscow and at the 3rd International Piano Competition of the Republic of San Marino, where he received first prize and a special Republic of San Marino 2008 award.
As a performer, Trifonov has appeared on major stages around the world. His engagements have included concerts with the London Symphony Orchestra and the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra under Valery Gergiev, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra under Zubin Mehta, and the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra under Antoni Wit. He has also collaborated with conductors including Mikhail Pletnev, Krzysztof Penderecki, Vladimir Fedoseyev, Neville Marriner, Pietari Inkinen, and Eivind Gullberg Jensen, and has performed at the Salle Pleyel in Paris, Carnegie Hall in New York, Suntory Hall in Tokyo, and Wigmore Hall in London.
His first compact disc was released on Decca in 2011, and he also made recordings for television and radio in Russia, the United States, Germany, France, Poland, Israel, and Italy. In 2012 he recorded an SACD for the Mariinsky label. In 2013 he signed an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon. His first disc for that label, a recording of his Carnegie Hall performance, was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2014, and for the same release he received the ECHO Klassik award for Newcomer of the Year, Piano from the German Recording Academy.
Trifonov received the Italian critics' Franco Abbiati Prize as best soloist in 2013. On April 23, 2014, the premiere of his piano concerto with orchestra was successfully presented. His disc Rachmaninov Variations, recorded with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Yannick Nézet-Séguin, was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2015 and received the Edison Classical Music Award in 2016. In 2015 director Christopher Nupen released a DVD containing the full-length documentary The Magics of Music and a recording of Trifonov's concert in Castelfranco Veneto; the DVD won the International Classical Music Award in 2016 in the Video Documentaries category, as well as a silver medal at the New York Film and Television Festival and an Accolade Award.
In November 2015, Trifonov joined the board of directors of the New York Philharmonic. In 2016 he received two major British classical music honors: the Royal Philharmonic Society award for Instrumentalist and Gramophone magazine's Artist of the Year award. In 2017 he was presented with the Herbert von Karajan Music Prize.
His double album Transcendental, devoted to Liszt études and including the Transcendental Études, S.139, as well as études S.141, S.144, and S.145, received several distinctions in 2017, including an ECHO Klassik award for the best solo recording of nineteenth-century piano music, the annual prize of the German Record Critics' Award, and the 2017 Grammy Award for Best Classical Instrumental Solo Album. In April 2019 he became a laureate of the Bravo award for the best instrumental album, Destination Rachmaninov. In November 2020 he was nominated for a Grammy Award in the category of Best Classical Instrumental Solo.
Among his major competition distinctions are the Grand Prix, first prize, gold medal, audience award, and a prize for the best performance of a concerto with chamber orchestra at the 14th International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in June 2011; first prize, gold medal, audience award, and awards for the best performance of works by Chopin and for the best chamber music performance at the 13th Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Tel Aviv in May 2011; third prize, bronze medal, and a special prize for the best performance of a mazurka at the 16th International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw in 2010; and third place at Eurovision Young Musicians 2010 in Vienna.
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