Gilmore International Keyboard Festival: Igor Levit, May 10; Denis Kozhukhin, May 31

You might have heard of Igor Levit by now: He’s a BBC New Generation Artist, recipient of the Royal Philharmonic Society Young Artist Award, Artistic Director for the Chamber Music Academy of the Festspiele Heidelberger Frühling… introducing the 27-year-old pianist is a performance in itself.

Beyond that, his album of Beethoven Sonatas and a follow-up album of Bach’s Partitas have garnered impressive acclaim. The Telegraph wrote, “Everything has that special clarity and freshness the world has when the sun comes out after rain.”

The New Yorker avouched astonished praise for Levit’s disc of sonatas, which was released in August 2013 on Sony Classical. “Here was playing of technical brilliance, tonal allure, intellectual drive, and an elusive quality that the Germans indicate with the word Innigkeit, or inwardness.”

He performs in our Rising Stars Series next Sunday, May 10 at 4 PM in Wellspring Theater.

Denis Kozhukhin and Igor Levit have a few uncanny things in common. Firstly, they were both born in Nizhny Novgorod – a large city in Russia – and both moved westward to continue their piano studies (Levit moved to Germany while Kozhukhin studied in Spain). And on a subject that Kozhukhin finds fundamental to his own playing style, both performers mix contemporary composers with classical composers in their programs.

“I like to put together Haydn sonatas, which were written some centuries ago, and Prokofiev sonatas, and to show the public and myself how the form was evolving and changing over the years, what the composers took from it, what they added,” Kozhukhin told the Chicago Classical Review.

He performs in our Rising Stars series on Sunday, May 31 at 4 PM in Wellspring Theater.