ALEXANDER TORADZE
Piano
Alexander Toradze is universally recognized as a masterful virtuoso in the grand Romantic tradition. With his unorthodox interpretations, deeply poetic lyricism, and intense emotional excitement, he lays claim to his own strong place in the lineage of great Russian pianists.
Mr. Toradze appears with the leading orchestras of North America, including the New York Philharmonic, Met Orchestra, Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Houston Symphony, Montreal Symphony, Toronto Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, Seattle Symphony, and National Symphony of Washington DC. Overseas, he appears regularly with the Mariinsky Orchestra, La Scala Philharmonic, Bavarian Radio Symphony, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Orchestre National de France, City of Birmingham Symphony, London Symphony and Israel Philharmonic. In June 2003, he made his triumphant debut with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Vladimir Jurowski.
In November, 2014 Toradze was reengaged at the Mexico National Symphony for Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 2 just eight months following his lauded Shostakovich Concerto No. 2 there. He has performed recently with the Swedish Radio Orchestra, Czech Philharmonic, Orchestre National de France, Pacific Symphony, Montreal Symphony, London Symphony, BBC Philharmonic, Dresden Philharmonic, Galicia Symphony, Toronto Symphony, Seattle Symphony and London Philharmonic, among others. Mr. Toradze regularly participates in summer music festivals including Salzburg, the White Nights in St. Petersburg, London's BBC Proms concerts, Edinburgh, Rotterdam, Mikkeli (Finland), the Hollywood Bowl, Saratoga, and Ravinia.
In October 2011 Mr. Toradze embarked on a North American tour with Mariinsky Orchestra, Valery Gergiev conducting, playing Shostakovich Piano Concerto No. 1 and Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 3. He also returned to the Seattle Symphony in April 2012. Mr. Toradzeperformed Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in January 2011 with the Indianapolis Symphony under Dmitri Slobodeniouk. In February 2011 he returned to Cincinnati Symphony for a performance ofProkofiev Piano Concerto No. 2 with Maestro Paavo Järvi.
In 2012 the label Pan and the HR (Hessischer Rundfunk).released a highly acclaimed recording of Mr. Toradze performing Shostakovich Piano concertos with Frankfurt Radio orchestra and Paavo Jarvi. Mr. Toradze's recording of all five Prokofiev concertos with Valery Gergiev and the Kirov Orchestra for the Philips label is considered definitive among critics. Additionally, International Piano Quarterly named his recording of Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 3 "historically the best on record" (from among over seventy recordings). Other highly successful recordings have included Scriabin's Prometheus: The Poem of Fire with the Kirov Orchestra and Valery Gergiev, as well as recital albums of the works of Mussorgsky, Stravinsky, Ravel, and Prokofiev for the Angel/EMI label.
Born in 1952 in Tbilisi, Georgia, Alexander Toradze graduated from the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow and soon became a professor there. In 1983, he moved permanently to the United States. In 1991, he was appointed as the Martin Endowed Chair Professor of Piano at Indiana University South Bend, where he has created a teaching environment that is unparalleled in its unique methods. The members of the multi-national Toradze Piano Studio have developed into a worldwide touring ensemble that has gathered great critical acclaim on an international level. In the 2002-2003 season, the Studio appeared in New York performing the complete cycle of Bach solo concerti, as well as Scriabin’s complete sonata cycle. The Studio has also performed projects detailing the piano and chamber works of Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, Dvorak, and Stravinsky, in Rome, Venice, and Ravenna, Italy; the Klavier Festival Ruhr and Berlin Festivals in Germany; and in Boston, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.
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Critical Acclaim
"Toradze is also a pianist of unconventional intelligence, range and creativity. If that meant adding all sorts of dynamic tricks and manners to Prokofiev's already fiendish score, then the fact that he could play nearly all the notes - unlike Argerich or the composer as pianist - won him that license."
The Arts Desk
“His [Prokofiev’s] character, even more so his groundbreaking innovation, was expressed perfectly in Toradze’s version. His [Toradze’s] technique was absolutely incontestable, with clear and clean fingering, perfect control of dynamics and a rich color, both in the more percussive moments and the most transparent ones of the concerto.”
“The syncopated rhythm of this movement [of Stravinsky’s Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments] shows a jazz influence, which Toradze highlighted notably.”
El Pais[ES]
“… [The concert] opened with the astonishing 54-year-old Toradze’s total embrace of the [Shostakovich] Second Concerto, a tour de force of consummate music-making.”
The Globe and Mail
"What distinguished Mr. Toradze's playing [in Prokofiev's Concerto No. 2] was his seemingly effortless control, his almost boyishly masculine pleasure in mastering the music's thorniness, and the innocent musicality of his virtuosity. Concertos are a kind of combat between soloist and orchestra, and Mr. Toradze gave the impression that he was in constant command not just of his part, but of everyone on stage."
The New York Times
"He stands among the best of the young generation of Soviet pianists...Few pianists in their 30s have so thorough a mastery of the instrument's sonic possibilities."
Chicago Tribune
"Toradze's performance [Prokofiev Concerto No. 2] was both brilliant and transparent, in the sense that one felt one was hearing the music directly as conceived in the composer's brain, without intermediary. There was never a feeling that this remarkable technique was being used for show. It was virtuosity in the service of music."
New York Newsday
"With Alexander Toradze, the ubiquitous C-minor Concerto [Rachmaninoff] sounded happily rethought. The Soviet pianist has strong and supple fingers, real musical authority and a fiery temperament. These he used masterfully on this occasion to re-illuminate familiar pages....In stretching Rachmaninoff's neo- Romantic lines to the aching, but not breaking point, his measure was perfect; he actually made the piano appear to sing. Rachmaninoff seldom receives such treatment."
Los Angeles Times
“…[Valery Gergiev] then dragged us into Prokofiev’s Fifth Piano Concerto at the hands of Alexander Toradze. This great Russian virtuoso gave an exuberantly brilliant performance, almost climbing on top of the piano; prodding it; teasing it in the second movement, a playful, sardonic game of marching rhythms and wild scales; banging the keys as though they were drums; leaping out of his seat at points, as though the piano had bitten him…It was an amazingly violent rendition, yet there was also much delicacy, especially in the larghetto, as the increasingly rich, full-bodied sound of the violins sang out. But soon Toradze was back bullying the piano, almost stubbing his fingers on the keys in the fourth-movement vivo. It left the two Russians grinning at each other at the end as if to say: ‘Answer that!’ – well, they are the world’s best in this repertory.”
London Times Online
"Alexander Toradze gave a performance of the Ravel F-major Piano Concerto that emblazed itself in memory. No artist known to me has fashioned as riveting and visceral a performance of the piece as did Toradze, or matched his playing in imagination and verve. He whispered and roared, caressed and drove home phrases and musical points with etched precision and demonic force...It was one of those signal performances that redefine the possibilities of a work and remap what had previously seemed familiar and well-known terrain."
Dallas Morning News
"Alexander Toradze strode onstage and struck through to the heart of [Beethoven's] Sonata Op. 109, exposing its structure in a long, clear line of development. It was a big performance, rich in bold and unusual accents. There was poetry in his playing of the variations, the poetry of maturity, lucid and often deeply sensitive in dynamic shading."
The Miami Herald
"Toradze lacks none of the tools required: technique, power, tonal control, accuracy and a fine sense of shading. His performance was stunning, bringing to mind 19th-century reviews of Liszt's performances, in which people were said to have swooned and pianos to have crept from the stage in utter defeat."
The Washington Post
"Mr. Toradze, who has proved a masterly Prokofiev player in previous appearances, played with astonishing fleetness and dexterity...When the music called for gentleness, particularly in parts of the last movement [Concerto No. 2], Mr. Toradze played with a velvety, poetic touch."
The New York Times
"Pianist Alexander Toradze made an equally spellbinding experience of Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto. Rhythmic sensitivity and attention to detail played as much a part of the effect as Toradze's technical prowess."
Musical America
"Toradze possesses one of the most complete and articulate commands of the piano today. But what he abundantly demonstrated on this occasion was that the poet in him is catching up with the fire-eating virtuoso. There were always poetic shades and details in Toradze's playing...But this sort of concentrated expression now seems to be a fixture in his playing rather than a highlight."
Dallas Morning News
"This reading [Prokofiev No. 2] reflected Toradze's sense of drama and extended ear for sonic distinctions. A vast dynamic range coupled with an unusual variety of attack allowed him to develop phrases and long musical ideas that do not sound in the hands of some other pianists...This was a performance that was playful, sensuous, boldly imagined and always bursting with spirit."
The Philadelphia Inquirer
"Where has Alexander Toradze been all our lives?…[In Beethoven's "Emperor" Concerto], he literally scaled the heights and plumbed the depths, plunging with saturnine zest from near-bombast to pianistic understatement, from flamboyant relish to the humblest of near-apologetic keystrokes. His ability to shape a phrase or a movement--reminiscent of Emil Gilels—more than matched his stage magnetism, bringing suppressed passion and explosive energy to a work that is still, for all its familiarity, innovative and challenging today."
Milwaukee Journal
"He plays it [Petrushka] with more verve and exhausts its pianistic and coloristic possibilities more completely than any other pianist. He never once forgets that it was, and remains foremost, an orchestral piece. The riot of colors, accents and bristling rhythms he brings to Petrushka are brilliantly plotted and breathtaking. His is a performance that is thrilling theater and builds steadily until the tension generated is finally released in a series of sweeping, flammatory glissandos that have you up and out of your chair."
Dallas Morning News
"He has a highly developed technique that opens every part of the repertoire to him. And it is not just precision, speed, and accuracy. His control of the dynamics of the instrument seems to be infallible; his louds are never harsh, and his softs are always clear."
Montreal Gazette
"Toradze left no doubt about the power of his playing as he cleanly sliced huge pieces of tone from the piano in the opening chords of the concerto [Tchaikovsky No. 1] and the thunderous octaves of its climaxes. But his tone was not just large. It was also meaty and full, keenly focused and pleasant in quality. It could also be admirably gentle and lyrical...."
Houston Post
"Toradze, [in Beethoven's "Emperor" Concerto], aided by a brilliant but sonorous Hamburg Steinway, was commanding from his first entrance, a magisterial set of E-flat arpeggios, trills and scales that set the tone for what was to follow....For once the piece was not only imperial but imperious."
Dallas Morning News