Cyprien Katsaris & Guests

Cyprien Katsaris is a French-Cypriot virtuoso pianist, teacher and composer. Amongst his teachers were Monique de la Bruchollerie, a student of Emil von Sauer, who had been a pupil of Franz Liszt. He is known for his refined sound, command of voicing, and virtually effortless physical mastery of technique. He is particularly notable as the first pianist to record the complete Liszt transcriptions of Beethoven's nine symphonies.

He first performed in public on 8 May 1966 at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris as a “knight” of a young performer competition entitled “The Kingdom of Music”. He went on to win prizes in the following competitions: Tribune internationale des jeunes interprètes UNESCO (Bratislava 1977), Concours international Cziffra (Versailles 1974), Prix de la Fondation Albert-Roussel (Paris 1970) and Prix de la Fondation Alex de Vries (Antwerp 1972). Katsaris has performed with the world’s greatest orchestras (Berlin Philharmonic, Staatskapelle Dresden, Deutsches Symphonieorchester, Cleveland Orchestra, Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam), playing under such outstanding conductors as Leonard Bernstein, Mstislav Rostropovich, Sir Neville Marriner, Sir Simon Rattle, Christoph von Dohnányi, Charles Dutoit, Ivan Fischer, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Kent Nagano, Sir Charles Mackerras, Vladimir Fedoseyev, Jukka-Pekka Saraste and Dmitri Kitajenko.