Alexandre Kantorow
About this Artist
Alexandre Kantorow has been hailed as the “young tsar of the piano” (Classica) and “Liszt reincarnated” (Fanfare). He has performed with many of the world’s finest orchestras, such as the Berliner Philharmoniker, Boston Symphony, and Budapest Festival orchestras, and with conductors including Klaus Mäkelä, Manfred Honeck, Jaap van Zweden, Iván Fischer, Vasily Petrenko, and Antonio Pappano. In 2019, at the age of 22, he was the first French pianist to win the Gold Medal at the International Tchaikovsky Competition as well as the Grand Prix, awarded only three times before in the competition’s history. In 2024 he received the Gilmore Artist Award.
In recital, Kantorow appears at Carnegie Hall, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Konzerthaus Berlin, London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall and Wigmore Hall, Philharmonie de Paris, Bozar in Brussels, and Tokyo Opera City, and festivals such as Edinburgh, Salzburg, La Roque d’Anthéron, Piano aux Jacobins, Verbier, Rheingau, and Klavierfest Ruhr. Chamber music is one his great pleasures, and he performs regularly with artists such as Janine Jansen, Renaud Capuçon, Gautier Capuçon, Daniel Lozakovich, and Matthias Goerne.
Highlights of Kantorow’s 2024/25 season include his debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and in recital at Chicago’s Symphony Center, a European tour with the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, Brahms’ Piano Concertos Nos. 1 and 2 with John Eliot Gardiner and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, and a tour of Europe with the Orchestre Métropolitain and Yannick Nézet-Séguin. He also performs solo recitals across Europe and Asia.
Kantorow records exclusively with BIS, and his recordings have received numerous awards, including Diapason d’Or de l’Année, Choc de l’Année (Classica), Trophée Radio Classique, and Victoires de la Musique Classique Recording of the Year. His new recording of works by Brahms and Schubert was released on November 1, 2024.
Kantorow is a laureate of the Safran Foundation and Banque Populaire. In 2020 and 2024 he was named the Victoires de la Musique Classique Instrumental Soloist of the Year. In 2022, he received the title of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the French Minister of Culture, and in 2024 he was awarded the medal of Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Mérite by French President Emmanuel Macron.
Born in France and of French-British heritage, Kantorow studied with Pierre-Alain Volondat, Igor Lazko, Frank Braley, and Rena Shereshevskaya.