Denis Kozhukhin

Celebrity Series of Boston recital / Haydn, Brahms, Rachmaninov, Franck, Prokofiev

“… one of the most absorbing piano recitals I have attended in some time… The performance stood as a monument—totally engrossing from graceful start to concluding climactic flourishes.”
Classical Scene, January 2016

Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No.3 / Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR cond. Shokakhimov

“… it’s as if the young piano star Denis Kozhukhin was specifically created to be a sensitive interpreter of Rachmaninov.

[Kozhukhin] gave the astounding impression that the virtuoso piece had played itself. Under his hands, the Steinway piano wasn’t pushed to its limits, but instead displayed the extraordinary virtuosity of this exceptional pianist, playing from memory and bent over the keyboard, conveying the most tender emotions with concentrated energy.”
Augsburger Allgemeine, December 2015

International Piano Series / Haydn, Brahms, Liszt, Bartók

“Unshowily but grippingly, he dispatched two Haydn sonatas and Bartók’s brilliantly condensed Out of Doors pieces, and ventured the high Romantic contrast of Liszt’s Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude. There was Brahms and encore Scarlatti, too – Kozhukhin ranged over the keyboard centuries like a duke displaying prized possessions.”
Sunday Times, October 2015

“Denis Kozhukhin … played [two Haydn sonatas] with brilliance, sensitivity and wit. His subtle and dynamic approach was a joy … The Liszt was altogether exceptional – luxuriant and evocative, ideally contemplative, ravishing the senses … Denis Kozhukhin is simply one of the best pianists around.”
Classical Source, October 2015

Auditorium du Louvre / Beethoven, Debussy, Berio, Bartók

“a pianist of obvious talent and with a radiant future”
ResMusica, September 2015

Chicago Symphony Orchestra début

“His firm tone, incisive attacks and supple sense of line made light of the work’s enormous technical difficulties. Especially in the formidable cadenza that closes the concerto, it was hard to believe he could deliver such commanding sound and spot-on accuracy using only five fingers. With Morlot’s sympathetic partnering, this was another winning performance… Thursday’s audience roared its approval.”
Chicago Tribune, June 2015

“Soloist Denis Kozhukhin made a bracing CSO debut… [he] brought concentrated power and fresh, limpid poetry to the arc of this single-movement work, keeping the contrasts in skillful alignment.”
Chicago Classical Review, June 2015

Barbican début with Sakari Oramo and BBC Symphony Orchestra

“Kozhukhin’s performance was so natural and musical that he allowed the music to speak on its own terms. The mix of strength and sensitivity in his playing was ideal. In the first movement he was particularly impressive in the great build up to the central climax and the intensity of the climax itself was spine tingling. The wind down from here to the hasty end of the movement was particularly touching and ambiguous… For once the work came across as a satisfying whole, equal to and in many ways more sophisticated than the earlier concerti.”
Bachtrack, May 2015

“This work finds in Denis Kozhukhin a champion of the first order. One admires the power of his touch, his technical precision and his subtle musicality.”
ResMusica, May 2015

“The slow-movement intermezzo… shimmered with velvet-textured colours, only to yield to the most thrilling of all Rachmaninov’s finales before the last of the Symphonic Dances. And the encore, Gluck’s “Dance of the Blessed Spirits” from Orfeo ed Euridice as simply transcribed by Giovanni Sgambati, was perfect: sustained song, poetry which Kozhukhin wielded no less than Rachmaninov the pianist in a celebrated recording to take us slowly into a metaphysical zone.”
Arts Desk, May 2015

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