Denis Kozhukhin

Berlin Philharmonie, Brahms

“Kozhukhin shows that he is rightly being counted amongst the most promising talents… It’s all about the music for him. There is no ounce of smugness or show! Denis Kozhukhin makes music and nothing else and he does it with a stupendous technique and a pleasantly sensual, but never sweetly feeling for romance. He is like a young lion with power, but also with velvety paws. He lets Brahms’s 7 Fantasies fluoresce like a dance and then exhales the last fantasy as Brahms would have wished. The young musician has the notes and the phrasing not only in his fingers, but also in his heart and mind. If he continues on this path, he’ll be a star.”
Der Neue Merker, April 2015

“Entirely consistent was Denis Kozhukhin’s account of Johannes Brahms’s Fantasies for piano which he performed self-confidently and with a full-bodied energetic touch: he combines power, clarity and an impressively masterful sense of form with the ability to express even the most tender of emotions without any sentimentality.
The equally attentive and respectful dialogue between Kremer and Kozhukhin benefits César
Franck’s violin sonata: imperative in its form and bathed in warm, heavy colours by the violin, it turns into the hoped-for celebration.”
Der Tagesspiegel, April 2015

“A self-confident pianist who is also able to listen as was demonstrated later in the Franck
sonata… Kozhukhin’s playing was sensual and full of colours.”
RBB Kultur, April 2015

“Kozhukhin presented himself in Berlin with an exquisitely sensitive shaping of the Brahms Fantasies Op.116, the autumnal note of which he struck with a maturity quite astonishing for his age.”
Die Presse, April 2015