Daniil Trifonov
Grammy Award-winning pianist Daniil Trifonov has made a spectacular ascent in the classical music world as 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 awe. “He has everything and more – tenderness and also the demonic element. I never heard anything like that,” Martha Argerich has said of him.
With «Transcendental», the Liszt collection that marked his third release as an exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist, Trifonov won the 2018 Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Solo Album. Named Gramophone’s 2016 Artist of the Year and Musical America’s 2019 Artist of the Year, he was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government in 2021. The Times has described him as “without question the most astounding pianist of our age.”
Trifonov’s 2025/26 season includes three programmes at Carnegie Hall. He performs Schubert’s «Die schöne Müllerin» there with German baritone Matthias Goerne, crowning a transatlantic tour of the composer’s great song cycles. The tour also takes the duo to Toronto, Dallas, and Washington, D.C. for «Winterreise»; to Québec City and Boston for «Schwanengesang»; and to Paris, Leipzig, and Vienna for all three cycles.
Also at Carnegie Hall, Trifonov joins Cristian Măcelaru and the Orchestre National de France for two great French piano concertos: Saint-Saëns’s Piano Concerto No. 2 and Ravel’s jazz-inflected Piano Concerto in G major. He also returns to Carnegie Hall’s main stage for a solo recital of works by Schumann, Myaskovsky, Taneyev, and Prokofiev, a programme he tours throughout Europe and the United States during the season.
Further highlights include a European tour with violinist Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider; Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Cleveland Orchestra and Franz Welser-Möst; a reprise of the same work with the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and Daniel Harding; and Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with both the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra under Cristian Măcelaru and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra led by Esa-Pekka Salonen. In October 2025, Deutsche Grammophon released Trifonov’s new double album «Tchaikovsky», exploring the composer’s more intimate side.
In 2024/25, Trifonov held season-long residencies with both the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Czech Philharmonic. Highlights with the latter included performances of Dvořák’s Piano Concerto with Semyon Bychkov on a North American tour that included Carnegie Hall. He opened the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra’s season with Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 25 under Andris Nelsons, before returning to Leipzig for several appearances in the orchestra’s Shostakovich Festival.
Other highlights included Prokofiev with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the San Francisco Symphony; Dvořák on a European tour with Jakub Hrůša and the Bamberg Symphony; Ravel with Hamburg’s NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra and Alan Gilbert; Schumann and Beethoven on a European tour with Rafael Payare and the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal; and recital appearances, both solo and with violinist Leonidas Kavakos, at Carnegie Hall and other destinations. Deutsche Grammophon released his double album «My American Story: North», featuring Mason Bates’s Piano Concerto – a work dedicated to Trifonov – captured live with Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Since making his solo recital debuts at Carnegie Hall, London’s Wigmore Hall, Vienna’s Musikverein, Japan’s Suntory Hall, and Paris’s Salle Pleyel in the 2012/13 season, Trifonov has given solo recitals at many of the world’s leading venues. These include the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.; London’s Barbican Centre, Royal Festival Hall, and Queen Elizabeth Hall; Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw; the Berlin Philharmonie; Munich’s Herkulessaal; Schloss Elmau; Zurich’s Tonhalle; the Lucerne Piano Festival; the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels; the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and Auditorium du Louvre in Paris; Barcelona’s Palau de la Música; Tokyo Opera City; the Seoul Arts Center; and the Melbourne Recital Centre.
His Deutsche Grammophon discography includes «Bach: The Art of Life», «Silver Age» with Russian solo and orchestral piano music by Scriabin, Prokofiev, and Stravinsky, the «Destination Rachmaninov» series with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, «Chopin Evocations», and «Trifonov: The Carnegie Recital», the live recording of his sold-out 2013 Carnegie Hall debut. Several of these recordings have received Grammy nominations; «Transcendental» won the Grammy Award in 2018.
During the 2010/11 season, Trifonov won medals at three of the music world’s most prestigious competitions: Third Prize at the Chopin Competition in Warsaw, First Prize at the Rubinstein Competition in Tel Aviv, and both First Prize and Grand Prix at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. In 2013, he was awarded the prestigious Franco Abbiati Prize for Best Instrumental Soloist.
Born in Nizhny Novgorod in 1991, Daniil Trifonov began his musical training at the age of five. He later attended Moscow’s Gnessin School of Music, where he studied with Tatiana Zelikman, before continuing his piano studies with Sergei Babayan at the Cleveland Institute of Music. He has also studied composition and continues to write for piano, chamber ensemble, and orchestra.
