Lev Vinocour

Lev Vinocour ( Russian Лев Винокур ; * 1970 in Leningrad ) is a German-Russian pianist . In 2002 he accepted German citizenship.

Career

At the age of six, Lev Vinocour entered the piano class of Valentina Kunde at the gifted school of the Leningrad Conservatory. At 13 he made his debut as a soloist with the Leningrad Philharmonic under the direction of Yevgeny Maravinsky .

In March 1988, the 17-year-old was awarded 2nd prize at the last piano competition of the USSR in Tbilisi. Vinocour graduated from the highly gifted school as a pianist and conductor with distinction and continued his education at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory in the class of Lev Vlassenko .

In 1993 he won first prize at both the Concours International de Piano in Epinal (France) and the Concorso Internazionale “Mavi Marcoz” in Aosta. The competition victory in Italy came with a cash prize that enabled Vinocour to take up further studies in the West after graduating from Moscow. He went to the UK and earned the Postgraduate (Masters) Diploma in Advanced Studies from Victoria University in Manchester.

Vinocour won 2nd prize at the 1st International “Clara Schumann” Concours in Düsseldorf. The jury member Alexis Weissenberg became aware of the pianist and invited him to his annual master classes in Engelberg, Switzerland, in which Vinocour participated initially as a student and later as an assistant.

On Weissenberg's recommendation, he was accepted into the Fondazione Internazionale per il Pianoforte on Lake Como in 1996, where he met pianists such as Murray Perahia , Charles Rosen and Karl-Ulrich Schnabel.

Main focus of work and publications

Works by Russian composers form a focus of Lev Vinocour's work. In 2006 and 2008 he recorded two albums with works by Peter Tchaikovsky and dedicates himself to the work of this composer in numerous appearances with solo works, chamber music and piano concerts. He also worked on the edition of Tchaikovsky's piano works as part of the New Complete Edition at Verlag Schott (Mainz).

The music journalist Jürgen Otten described Vinocour's recording of all of Robert Schumann's studies as a “significant editorial act” . In 2007, after two years of work, Lev Vinocour succeeded in developing and orchestrating Schumann's youth piano concerto in F major, which has long been known in musicology, but only survived in fragments. The concert is one of five world premiere recordings on the 3-CD box “Robert Schumann: Complete Works for Piano and Orchestra”, which Vinocour recorded in 2010 with the ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra Vienna under the direction of Johannes Wildner .

Another focus of his work are rarely heard works for piano and orchestra: Adolph von Henselt Piano Concerto in F minor, op. 16, Sophie Menter “Hungarian Gypsy Ways ” orchestrated by Peter Tchaikovsky , Alexander Scriabin Piano Concerto in F sharp minor, op. 20 and Franz Liszt “De Profundis”.

With the documentary “Franz Liszt. The late years ”, broadcast for the first time in 2011 (ZDF / ORF; director: Günther Klein), brought Lev Vinocour's life and work to a TV audience. The Swiss filmmaker Beat Kuert dedicated a musical and biographical portrait to Vinocour in the series "Berg und Geist", which is also broadcast in Germany. From October 2012, 3sat broadcast the series “Sonata for Two”, in which Vinocour and the presenter Nina Mavis Brunner followed in the footsteps of great composers.

Lev Vinocour was piano partner of the Tokyo String Quartet for many years and played with the Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Prague Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and the Moscow Tchaikovsky Orchestra.

Discography

• 1999: "Sergej Prokofiev: Transcriptions for Piano" (2 CDs)
• 2000: "Johann Strauss: Transcriptions for Piano" (1 CD)
• 2006: "Robert Schumann: The Complete Etudes for Piano" (3 CDs)
• 2007: "Peter Tschaikowsky: Piano Music" (1 CD)
• 2008: "Peter Tschaikowsky: Sleeping Beauty Piano Transcriptions" (1 CD)
• 2010: "Robert Schumann: Complete Works for Piano and Orchestra" (3 CDs)
• 2014: "Frédéric Chopin: Etudes" (1 CD)

Web links

• Lev Vinocour website

Individual evidence

1. ^ Website of the "Clara Schumann" Concours