Czech Philharmonic • Bratislava

Grammy Award-winning pianist Daniil Trifonov is a solo artist, champion of the concerto repertoire, chamber and vocal collaborator, and composer. Combining consummate technique with rare sensitivity and depth, his performances are a perpetual source of wonder to audiences and critics alike. He won the Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Solo Album of 2018 with Transcendental, the Liszt collection that marked his third title as an exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist.

In 2024/2025, Trifonov undertakes season-long artistic residencies with both the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Czech Philharmonic. A highlight of his Chicago residency is Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto with incoming music director Klaus Mäkelä, and his Czech tenure features Dvořák’s Concerto with Semyon Bychkov at season-opening concerts in Prague, Toronto, and at New York’s Carnegie Hall. Trifonov also opens the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra’s season with Mozart’s 25th Piano Concerto under Andris Nelsons; performs Prokofiev’s Second with the San Francisco Symphony and Esa-Pekka Salonen; reprises Dvořák’s concerto for a European tour with Jakub Hrůša and the Bamberg Symphony; plays Ravel’s G-major Concerto with Hamburg’s NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra and Alan Gilbert; and joins Rafael Payare and the Montreal Symphony for concertos by Schumann and Beethoven on a major eight-city European tour. In recital, Trifonov appears twice more at Carnegie Hall as part of two U.S. tours, with a solo program and with violinist Leonidas Kavakos. Due for release in fall 2024, My American Story, the pianist’s new Deutsche Grammophon double album, pairs solo pieces with concertos by Gershwin and Mason Bates.

Trifonov’s existing Deutsche Grammophon discography includes the Grammy-nominated live recording of his Carnegie recital debut; Chopin Evocations; Silver Age, for which he received Opus Klassik’s Instrumentalist of the Year/Piano award; the best-selling, Grammy-nominated double album Bach: The Art of Life; and three volumes of Rachmaninov works with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, of which two received Grammy nominations and the third won BBC Music’s 2019 Concerto Recording of the Year. Named Gramophone’s 2016 Artist of the Year and Musical America’s 2019 Artist of the Year, Trifonov was made a “Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres” by the French government in 2021.

During the 2010/2011 season, Trifonov won medals at three of the music world’s most prestigious competitions: Third Prize in Warsaw’s Chopin Competition, First Prize in Tel Aviv’s Rubinstein Competition, and both First Prize and Grand Prix in Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Competition. He studied with Sergei Babayan at the Cleveland Institute of Music.

Charles Dutoit, one of the greatest conducting experts on French and Russian symphonic music of the 19th and 20th centuries, has visited Prague several times during his more than sixty-year career. The Swiss conductor, now almost ninety years old, first came here in the early 1970s and remained in contact throughout the 1990s. Many may remember his concerts with the Czech Philharmonic in the new millennium, including at the Prague Spring Festival, where he appeared with his wife, violinist Chantal Juillet, and where the music of Igor Stravinsky took centre stage. It was the famous The Rite of Spring, which he was not afraid to conduct at a young age despite its great difficulty, that was one of the compositions that brought him to prominence at the beginning of his career. We last heard him with the Czech Philharmonic at the opening of the 2024/2025 season.

His path to the world of music was not straightforward – he had no musical background in his family. Nevertheless, he began playing the violin and, thanks to his performances in a chamber orchestra, he also tried his hand at conducting. He studied at conservatories in his native Lausanne and also in Geneva, where he exchanged the violin for the viola, after which he went on to study in Siena and Tanglewood. During this period, he also earned a living as a violist. He made his official conducting debut at the age of 23 with the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra, and soon after received an offer from Herbert von Karajan to conduct at the Vienna State Opera. This was followed by engagements with the Bern Symphony Orchestra and the Zurich Radio Orchestra, and significant collaborations with world-class orchestras began to multiply. He devoted particular long-term care to the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, where he served as music director for 25 years; he also held the same position for 20 years with the Orchestre National de France. As chief conductor and music director, he also enriched the NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London, and the Verbier Festival Orchestra. In recent years, he has also served as principal guest conductor of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic.

The recipient of a gold medal from the Royal Philharmonic Society and the prestigious Premio una Vita nella Musica award from La Fenice Theatre, he has also made numerous guest appearances in addition to his aforementioned commitments. In North America, he has been repeatedly invited by orchestras in Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia; in Europe, he has received offers from London, Berlin, Paris, Munich, Hamburg, and Moscow; and he has also performed in Sydney, Tokyo, and Shanghai. He has a special bond with China, where he has not only travelled 35 times, but has also premiered some important works from the European repertoire: in addition to the aforementioned The Rite of Spring, these include Britten’s War Requiem and operas by Richard Strauss. In addition to symphonic works, he has also devoted himself to opera conducting: he has appeared repeatedly at London’s Covent Garden, New York’s Metropolitan Opera, Berlin’s Deutsche Oper, and the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. During his active career, Charles Dutoit has also left behind more than 200 recordings, many of which have won major awards, including two Grammy Awards.

A globetrotter motivated by his passion for history and archaeology, political science, art and architecture, Charles Dutoit has travelled in all 196 nations of the world.