Daniil Trifonov
Piano
Grammy Award-winning pianist Daniil Trifonov is 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 wonder to audiences and critics alike. He won the Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Solo Album of 2018 with Transcendental, the Liszt collection that marked his third title as an exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist.
Trifonov's 2025-26 season includes three programs at Carnegie Hall. First, he performs Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin with German baritone Matthias Goerne, crowning a transatlantic tour of the composer's great song cycles which also takes the duo from Toronto, Boston and Washington, D.C., to Paris, Leipzig and Vienna. Next at the New York venue, Trifonov joins Cristian Măcelaru and the Orchestre National de France for two major French concertos: Saint-Saëns' Second and Ravel's jazz-inflected Concerto in G. Finally, he returns to Carnegie Hall for a mainstage solo recital of Schumann, Myaskovsky, Taneyev and Prokofiev, with which program he tours Europe and the U.S. throughout the season. Other highlights include a European tour with Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider; Brahms' Second Piano Concerto with both the Cleveland Orchestra and Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia; and Beethoven's Second Piano Concerto with both the Cincinnati and Chicago symphony orchestras. Trifonov also explores Tchaikovsky's more intimate side on a new double album, Tchaikovsky, released by Deutsche Grammophon in October 2025.
Trifonov's existing Deutsche Grammophon discography includes 2024's My American Story: North, which received the U.K.'s Presto Music Award; the Grammy-nominated live recording of his Carnegie recital debut; Chopin Evocations; Silver Age, for which he received Opus Klassik's Instrumentalist of the Year/Piano award; the best-selling, Grammy-nominated double album Bach: The Art of Life; and three volumes of Rachmaninoff works with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, of which two received Grammy nominations and the third won BBC Music Magazine's 2019 Concerto Recording of the Year. Named Gramophone's 2016 Artist of the Year and Musical America's 2019 Artist of the Year, Trifonov was made a "Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres" by the French government in 2021.
During the 2010-11 season, Trifonov won medals at three of the music world's most prestigious competitions: Third Prize in Warsaw's Chopin Competition, First Prize in Tel Aviv's Rubinstein Competition, and both First Prize and Grand Prix in Moscow's Tchaikovsky Competition. He studied with Sergei Babayan at the Cleveland Institute of Music.
