Born in Leningrad in 1950, Grigory Sokolov was only five years old when he attracted the attention of the Russian music world with his extraordinary talent. He attended a special music school and was enrolled at the Leningrad Conservatory by 1960. When he was 16, a jury headed by Emil Gilels unanimously declared him the winner of the Third International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition, a triumph that launched his performance career. He regularly performs concerts in the world's major concert halls, including Vienna's Musikverein, the Berliner Philharmonie, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, New York's Carnegie Hall, as well as in venues in London, Salzburg, Tokyo, Paris and Rome. He has partnered with such orchestras as the New York, Dresden, Munich and Warsaw philharmonics, the Bamberg Symphony, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Helsinki Radio Orchestra and Milan's La Scala Philharmonic Orchestra, and has collaborated with many of the world's leading conductors. His extensive repertoire ranges from Bach to Schönberg, and the seriousness and originality of his musical interpretation and the precision of his performance style captivate both audiences and critics wherever he plays. His style is distinctive in that he makes very little use of the pedals, while his keyboard technique is of the highest order, allowing him to elicit an immense variety of sounds from the piano. His poetic playing abounds in unique solutions, making even the most familiar pieces seem astonishingly fresh when he performs them.

Presented by: Jakobi Koncert Kft.