Alexander Toradze

Piano

Management: Spain - Portugal

Artist

Alexander Toradze is universally recognized as a masterful virtuoso in the grand Romantic tradition. He has enriched the Great Russian pianistic heritage with his own unorthodox interpretative conceptions, deeply poetic lyricism, and intensely emotional excitement.

Mr. Toradze’s recording of all five Prokofiev concertos with Valery Gergiev and the Kirov Orchestra for the Philips label, is acclaimed by critics as definitive. His recording of Prokofiev’s Piano Concert No. 3 was named by International Piano Quarterly as «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, Valery Gergiev conducting as well as recital albums of the works of Mussorgsky, Stravinsky, Ravel and Prokofiev for the Angel/EMI label.
Mr. Toradze regularly appears with the world’s leading orchestras. Among his best friends, some of the leading conductors of today such as Valery Gergiev, Esa Pekka Salonen, Yukka Pekka Saraste, Mikko Frank, Paavo and Kristian Järvi, Vladimir Jurowski and Gianandrea Noseda.

Additionally, Mr. Toradze regularly takes part in many summer music festivals including those of Salzburg, the White Nights in St. Petersburg, London’s BBC Proms concerts, Edinburgh, Rotterdam, Mikkeli (Finland), the Hollywood Bowl, Saratoga, and Ravinia.

Recent engagements include the BBC Philharmonic and Swedish Radio Orchestras under Gianandrea Noseda, the London Symphony and the Mariinsky Orchestras under Valery Gergiev, the Cincinnati Symphony under Paavo Järvi, the London Philharmonic under the Music Director Vladimir Jurowski and Jukka Pekka Saraste in addition to concerts with the Orchestre National de France, the Gulbenkian Orchestra, the Czech and the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestras. In March 2010 he took part to a US tour with the London Philharmonic under the baton of Vladimir Jurowski, including a concert at the Avery Fisher Hall in New York.

Among recent projects were the opening concert celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Stresa Festival under the baton of Gianandrea Noseda, the recording of both Shostakovich Pianoconcerti with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra under Paavo Järvi.

Born 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 and in 1991 he was appointed as the Martin endowed Professor of Piano at the Indiana University South Bend, where he has created a teaching environment that is unparalleled in its unique concept. The members of the multi-national Toradze Piano Studio have developed into a worldwide touring ensemble that has performed projects detailing the piano and chamber works of Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, Dvorak, Stravinsky and Shostakovich in Europe (UK, Italy, Germany, Portugal, France) and in the United States.

Contact

Mónica Lorenzo

Director

M. +34 646 987 403

mlorenzo@agenciacamera.com

Downloads

Alexander Toradze's Biography

Links

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Reviews

The New York Times

"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."

New York Newsday

"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."

The Miami Herald

"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 Washington Post

"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 New York Times

"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."

Discography