Grigory Sokolov receives Ruby Festival Brooch
“One of the great pianists of our times, whose incomparable interpretations have long made him one of the essential Festival artists,” thus Artistic Director Markus Hinterhäuser lauded Grigory Sokolov in a speech one day before his solo recital atthe Großes Festspielhaus, presenting the pianist with the Golden Festival Brooch with Rubies
“It is part of the Sokolov phenomenon that one just stops thinking at once about the fabulous level of his manual, pianistic facility, accepting it as a given – instead, one simply listens to a musician delivering his interpretations,” Walter Weidringer wrote in Die Presse about Sokolov’s solo piano recital at last year’s Salzburg Festival. Weidringer described his treatment of the written score: “What seems quite abstract on paper is transformed by this master into concrete music, as subjective as it is universally valid.” And Reinhard J. Brembeck characterized Sokolov’s 2020 Festival performance in the Süddeutsche Zeitung: “It is also typical [for Sokolov] that he finds the appropriate tone for each composer… Sokolov the narrator is always clear, yet he keeps his composers’ secrets.”
Born in Leningrad in 1950, Sokolov made headlines beyond the Soviet Union in 1966, when he won the gold medal of the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow at the age of 16, the youngest musician to do so. His Salzburg Festival debut took place on 10 August 2001 at the Main Auditorium of the International Mozarteum Foundation, where he played works by François Couperin, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and César Franck. Since then, he has been a regular guest in Salzburg. Grigory Sokolov authorized the recording of his recital at the Großes Festspielhaus in the summer of 2008 to be released. This Salzburg Recital documents how his interpretation of works by Mozart, Chopin, Scriabin, Rameau and Bach become sound.
Tomorrow sees his 19th appearance at the Salzburg Festival.
His programmes cover the breadth of music history, from transcriptions of sacred polyphonic works and pieces by Byrd, Couperin, Rameau and Bach to the classical and romantic repertoire – especially Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Chopin and Brahms – and all the way to key works of the 20th century.
Previous recipients of the Ruby Festival Brooch include Festival artists such as Riccardo Muti, Christa Ludwig, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Zubin Mehta, Mariss Jansons, Daniel Barenboim, Franz Welser-Möst, Wolfgang Rihm and András Schiff.
