Dmitry Masleev
“Super-soloist” is the way France Musique introduced Dmitry Masleev when he appeared with the Orchestre National de France, playing the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1, the work that helped launch his international career, when he won the 2015 Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition in Moscow. Dmitry’s solo recital debut at the Philhamonie de Paris in March 2022 confirmed that a new phenomenon has emerged among the most interesting pianists of our time: “What an artist! Everything is so simple, so ingenious, without the slightest attempt to explain the music,” wrote Alain Lompech (Bachtrack).

The current season begins with the release of a new album, The Seasons, on Europe’s leading piano label Mirare. Along with Tchaikovsky’s iconic piano cycle, the recording features rarely performed works by Glinka, Cui and Balakirev, as well as a riveting interpretation of Mussorgsky’s Night on a Bald Mountain.

The highlights of the current season include a return to Paris for a recital at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées on the prestigious series Piano 4 Étoiles, which exclusively presents pianists like Martha Argerich, Daniel Barenboim, Andras Schiff, and Arcadi Volodos, among others. Dmitry will also appear at La Folle Journée, Les Étoiles du Classique, and the Printemps de l’Orgue festivals, where he will give the world premiere of the piano and organ transcription of the Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No. 3. He will give recitals at the most important halls of China, Russia, and Latin America, collaborate with the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra, both in Germany and in Italy, and tour again with the Orchestra della Toscana.

Dmitry’s orchestral collaborations also include the Sinfonieorchester Basel (Ariane Matiakh), Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra (Robert Trevino), Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France (Mikko Franck), Orchestre National de Lyon (Tan Dun), Bamberg Orchestra (Christoph Eschenbach), and Orquestra Cadaqués (David Robertson), Tampere Philharmonic (Joshua Weilerstein), Verbier Festival Orchestra (Gábor Takács-Nagy), and many others. Last spring Dmitry resumed his collaboration with the Györ Philahrmonic Orchestra (Martin Rajna), performing the Prokofiev Concerto No. 3 at the sold-out Golden Hall of Musikverein in Vienna.

In the recent seasons Dmitry was also invited to perform at the Lucerne Festival, Klavierfestival Ruhr, as well as at Montreux, Rheingau, Bad Kissingen, Bodensee, Bergamo and Brescia, Stars of the White Nights, and La Roque d’Anthéron. His return to La Roque last summer was described by Jean-Rémi Barland (La Provence) as “a magical evening where virtuosity merged with the innermost workings of the soul… Masleev brings us, note by note, to the pure emotional reality of what life is all about.” Last season Dmitry spent a week in residence at a new festival at Caltanissetta (Italy) with a special focus on music education and social responsibility.

The 2019 Verbier Festival recital debut of Dmitry Masleev was among many of his performances broadcast on Medici TV to thousands of people worldwide. In 2020 he gave the world premiere of the recently discovered early works of Dmitry Shostakovich in a virtual concert presented by the International Shostakovich Festival in Gohrisch and broadcast by ARTE, Mitteldeutsche Rundfunk, and Deutsche Grammophon.

Dmitry’s previous album, Rapid Movement, recorded with Siberian State Symphony and Vladimir Lande, features Shostakovich Piano Concerto No. 1 alongside the Jazz Suite by Alexander Tsfasman and the Piano Concerto No. 2 by a contemporary Russian composer Nikolai Kapustin (Dmitry’s performance of this concerto has reached over 250,000 views on YouTube, while the recording of Kapustin’s Toccatina is nearly at 600,000 views). The pianist’s choice of repertoire for this project was inspired by the dark sense of irony emblematic of Dmitry Shostakovich, who once said that he was keen “to defend the right to be funny in this so-called serious music”.

Dmitry Masleev’s very first album, launched with a performance at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and featuring solo and orchestral repertoire, has made the Spotify Top Classical 2017 charts and received the prestigious German Critics’ Prize (Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik) in the solo piano category, where it was nominated alongside Krystian Zimerman’s Schubert album (DG). “One can only revel in the poetic spontaneity of this Scarlatti recording, not least because of the brilliance, precision and ease of Masleev's playing” (Westdeutsche Rundfunk). Within the first six months of the release, Mr. Masleev’s own arrangement of Shostakovich’s Elegy from the Ballet Suite No. 3 has been downloaded on iTunes over 43,000 times.

“It is fascinating to witness his artistic development. One cannot be taught to play like this. It takes a lot of natural musicality… Masleev shows how within a small space one can open up an entire cosmos of a soul. That is great art and that is what you always want and rarely get as a listener: watching the artist looking for himself and listening to him find it,” wrote Helmut Mauró in Süddeutsche Zeitung in 2019.

North America fell in love with Dmitry Masleev when he made his Carnegie Hall recital debut at the Isaac Stern Auditorium in January 2017 and repeated the same program at Toronto’s Koerner Hall in March. In 2018, he toured coast-to-coast with the Moscow State Symphony and Pavel Kogan. In the summer of 2022 he performed at the Newport Classical Festival and the Festival Napa Valley.

Annual visits to South America have established Dmitry as an audience favorite in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, and Ecuador. During the Covid-19 pandemic Dmitry collaborated with Allegro HD, the main arts and culture TV network of the continent, to deliver music to his fans despite the travel restrictions.

Dmitry regularly performs in the Asian capitals, both with orchestras such as Seoul Philharmonic, New Japanese Philharmonic, and National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan, as well as in recital.

Born and raised in Ulan-Ude (a Siberian town between Lake Baikal and the Mongolian border), Dmitry was educated at the Moscow Conservatory in the class of Professor Mikhail Petukhov, and at the International Music Academy at Lake Como.