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...an imperious sweep with aristocratic poise and sensitivity... Music Web International

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PRESS RELEASE Royal Albert Hall and IMG Artists present:Valentina Lisitsa– 19 June 2012, Royal Albert Hall Heralded as ‘a gigantic talent’ and her multi-faceted playing described as ‘dazzling’, pianist Valentina Lisitsa pushes traditional boundaries to reach out to audiences around the globe. Now the most sought-after classical musician on the web performs at the Royal Albert Hall on Tuesday 19 June 2012 for a special one-off piano recital. A champion in the use of new media, with more than 30 million YouTube channel views and more than 42,000 subscribers to her YouTube channel, Valentina Lisitsa is one of the most popular contemporary classical musicians in the world and has changed perceptions on how classical music can be viewed and performed. Last summer, thousands of music fans worldwide witnessed the live broadcast of her practice sessions as she learnt and prepared almost 4 hours of new music in daily 14-hour sessions, allowing Valentina to show a different aspect of her artistic persona. With almost 2 million hits for just one of her videos, she is the most popular pianist on YouTube. Having performed around the world including debuts with the Chicago Symphony, Seattle Symphony, WDR Cologne, Seoul Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony and the Pittsburgh Symphony, she has bedazzled audiences with her vast repertoire ranging from Bach and Mozart to Shostakovich and Bernstein. She admits to having a special affinity for the music of Rachmaninoff and Beethoven and continues to add to her vast repertoire each season. Her orchestral repertoire alone includes more than forty concerti. She has also recorded 3 independently released DVDs, including her best-selling set of Chopin’s 24 Etudes, which long held the coveted No.1 spot on the Amazon music video list. This special concert is presented by the Royal Albert Hall and IMG Artists as part of the Hall’s growing commitment to promote more events itself and provide new and diverse visitor experiences for as wide a range of music lovers as possible. Jasper Hope, Chief Operating Officer at the Hall, said “We are delighted to welcome Valentina Lisitsa to the Hall for her debut performance at the venue. Her presentation of classical music in a modern context and huge online popularity is nothing short of phenomenal and this concert on the world’s most famous stage will no doubt add to her ever growing fan base” Notes to editor: For more information, please contact Sean Carrigan on 020 7959 0531 or email seanc_royalalberthall.com. Listings details:Valentina Lisitsa at the Royal Albert Hall, Tuesday 19 June, 8pmTickets: £10- £35 (plus booking fee) - on sale Thursday 10 November 2011 at 9amBox Office: 020 7589 8212 or book online at www.royalalberthall.com Royal Albert Hall The Royal Albert Hall is the world’s most famous stage. Its breathtaking auditorium hosts over 370 shows a year by the world’s greatest artists. The magical atmosphere combined with inspired artists creates legendary events. Opened in 1871 as part of Prince Albert’s vision for a centre for the Arts and Sciences, and a registered charity operating without public funding, it remains true to his founding ambitions within a modern context. Extending the brand with over 120 events outside the auditorium, the Hall has broadened its appeal to younger, diverse audiences whilst still engaging its existing customers. In 2009, the Hall renovated the Elgar Room as a state-of-the-art performance space and restaurant which now hosts performances of classical music, jazz and world music, comedy, dance and hush, a series of gigs for just signed bands throughout the year. It also works extensively with schools and young people through its Learning and Participation programme, reaching over 30,000 participants each year. For more information, please visit www.royalalberthall.com For more information on Valentina Lisitsa please visit www.valentinalisitsa.com or http://www.youtube.com/user/ValentinaLisitsa
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Ambito Financiero

Ambito financiero

Ukranian Lisitsa astonished the colon with chopin and lisztDespite her apparent physical frailty, she delivers a devastating force, as required to play “Totentanz” by Liszt. By: Margarita Pollini17 November 2011Ambito Financiero.comV. Lisitsa (piano) Recital. Works by F. Chopin and F. Liszt (Festivales Musicales de Buenos Aires, Teatro Colón. November 14).As one of the brightest figures of the "young generations", Ukrainian pianist Valentina Lisitsa closed on Monday the 2011 season of the Festivales Musicales in Buenos Aires, with a concert devoted to works by Chopin and Liszt.The remarkable clarity of ideas and musicality of this amazing performer (in addition to its enormous technique, memory and concentration) was evident from the first note of the program, the "Fantasy in F minor" by Chopin opus 49. The "tour de force" that followed included the execution of the twelve studies of the Polish composer's opus 25, which was a very personal vision of this popular series. Repeatedly joining one study with another, Lisitsa gave a "suite" character to the set, providing the right insight even in the most difficult and virtuosic passages. The great and dreaded Franz Liszt, whose works filled the second part, seemed to be better suited to the temperament of the pianist, whose phenomenal mastery of the keyboard lets you easily navigate the traps scattered in each measure. Despite her apparent physical frailty, Lisitsa delivers a devastating force, required to play the "Totentanz" (one of the workhorses of the Ukrainian), the "Ballad No. 2", or very virile "Rondeau Fantastique”.An interesting instance was the execution of one of several Paraphrases composed by Liszt on themes from operas, namely the "Sacred Dance and final duet from Verdi’s Aida". Crowned by dynamics, she recreated climate in which the opera ends in a performance to remember. It was clear more than ever Lisitsa's ability to create a huge color palette, unfortunately, the piano Steinway & Sons was slightly out of tune on the high register, which blemished the subtlety of her execution.Two other works by Liszt were offered as encores: a transcription of "Ave Maria" by Franz Schubert and Liszt’s own "Hungarian Rhapsody No. 12", which again brought the public to their feet.Original:Recital de V. Lisitsa (piano). Obras de F. Chopin y F. Liszt (Festivales Musicales de Buenos Aires, Teatro Colón, 14 de noviembre).Una de las más rutilantes figuras de la «joven guardia» pianística, la ucraniana Valentina Lisitsa, cerró el lunes pasado la temporada 2011 de la asociación Festivales Musicales de Buenos Aires, con un recital dedicado a obras de Chopin y Liszt.La notable claridad de ideas y musicalidad de esta intérprete asombrosa (amén de su técnica descomunal, su memoria y su capacidad de concentración) se hizo evidente desde la primera obra del programa, la «Fantasía en fa menor» opus 49 de Chopin, mientras que el «tour-de-force» que le siguió, la ejecución de los doce estudios del opus 25 del compositor polaco, mostró una visión muy personal de esta conocida serie. Encadenando en repetidas oportunidades un estudio con otro, Lisitsa de dio un carácter de «suite», y ni aún en sus páginas más virtuosísticas la interpretación careció de la introspección necesaria.El genial y temible Franz Liszt, cuyas obras conformaron la segunda parte, parece ser el compositor que mejor se adapta al temperamento de la pianista, cuyo fenomenal dominio del teclado le permite sortear con facilidad las trampas dispersas en cada compás. Pese a su físico delgado de aparente fragilidad, Lisitsa puede volcar una fuerza demoledora, como la que requiere la «Totentanz» (uno de los caballitos de batalla de la ucraniana), la «Balada n° 2» o el muy masculino «Rondeau fantástico sobre El contrabandista».Una instancia interesante fue la ejecución de una de las tantas paráfrasis compuestas por Liszt sobre temas extraídos de óperas, en este caso la «Danza sacra y duetto final de Aida de Verdi», en una interpretación para el recuerdo coronada por una dinámica que recreó el clima en que finaliza la ópera. Más que nunca quedó clara allí la capacidad de Lisitsa para abrir una inmensa paleta de colores; lamentablemente, el piano Steinway & Sons hizo escuchar desafinaciones en las cuerdas agudas que empañaron ligeramente la sutileza de esta versión.Las otras dos obras de Liszt brindadas como bises fueron su transcripción del «Ave María» de Franz Schubert y su «Rapsodia húngara n° 12», que provocaron una vez más el delirio del público.

Slipped Disc

The most popular pianist on youtubeSeptember 12, 2011 By Norman Lebrecht 17 Comments You thought it was Lang Lang, right?Wrong. Lang Lang scores 1,537,277 views for an early video, Gone Mad, that has been up for about five years. Only two other Lang Lang videos top the million mark.Another classical pianist repeatedly outscores Lang Lang on youtube.Her name is Valentina Lisitsa.Her top hit is Rachmaninov’s G-minor prelude with 1,605,052 views, followed by Etude opus 39/6 with 1,304,978 views, Beethoven’s Moonlight sonata 1,296,475, Chopin’s Etude opus 10/4 at 1,037,627, op 25/4 at 1,238,364 - and that’s without clicking on Für Elise at almost two million.How does she do it. Val’s a Ukrainian pianist based in North Carolina who has just changed management from Cami to IMG. I first heard her accompanying Ida Haendel in a London recital and was impressed both by her sensitivity and her strength of character.But how did she get to be #1 on youtube?No-one knows. Or, if they do, they ain’t telling for fear Lang Lang will try to beat her with Chopsticks.Well done, Val. We’ll keep watching

Chicago Classical

Chicago Classical review

Lisitsa offers blazing virtuosity and heart at RaviniaFri Aug 19, 2011 at 11:21 amBy Wynne DelacomaPianist Valentina Lisitsa performed a wide-ranging recital Thursday night at Ravinia.The last time Valentina Lisitsa performed at Ravinia was in October 1993. Making her Ravinia debut, she was part of a duo-piano team (with husband Alexei Kuznetsoff) on the park’s off-season Rising Stars series. The Ukrainian-born Lisitsa was back at Ravinia on Thursday night, this time in a Liszt-heavy solo recital in Bennett Gordon Hall, part of the festival’s celebrations of Liszt’s 200th birthday year. A powerhouse pianist with soul, her star has definitely risen.Lisitsa may have been long gone from Ravinia, but with her signature flowing blond hair and exuberant, technically dazzling performance style she became a Chicago favorite elsewhere, a regular guest at the Grant Park Music Festival and other venues.Thursday’s concert offered a kind of Lisitsa-Liszt immersion. For nearly three hours, with only a 15-minute intermission and virtually no break between pieces, Lisitsa blazed through a demanding program of Liszt, Chopin, Schubert, Mozart and Godowski. She played with flair and thoughtful insight as well as intense delight, racing through Liszt’s most manic, densely ornamented pages with blinding speed and machine-tooled precision. It was the kind of concert that left the audience exhilarated but exhausted. Lisitsa, on the other hand, finally wrapping things up with a serenely dappled Fur Elise for an encore, looked like she could have played all night.The scheduled program was meaty: Mozart’s C Minor Fantasy, K. 475; seven Chopin nocturnes; Godowski’s Symphonic Metamorphoses on Themes from Johann Strauss II’s ‘Die Fledermaus’; six Liszt transcriptions of Schubert songs; Schubert’s Impromptu in B-flat Major, D. 935, No. 3, and Liszt’s arrangement for solo piano of Totentanz (Danse macabre). In a free-spirited move, Lisitsa decided to open with an extravagantly shaded, unannounced additional work of Liszt before launching into an equally dramatic performance of Mozart’s Fantasy.The highlights were many. Lisitsa is a virtuoso of the first class, seemingly tireless, with fingers and arms of steel. In Liszt’s Totentanz, there was terrifying thunder in her relentlessly pounding octaves. The fearsome sound seemed to emerge from very depths of Hell itself.But she resists the temptation to simply dazzle with her fancy finger-work. Throughout the evening, especially in the Chopin nocturnes, Lisitsa never indulged in cheap theatrics. Her program was full of pieces with abrupt shifts in mood, but she was careful not to exaggerate those shifts with distorted phrasing or over-the-top emotion. She trusted each composer to make his own case. One variation in the Schubert Impromptu summoned up a world of unselfconscious child’s play, full of cheerful hesitations and whirlwind flights. In Liszt’s transcription of Schubert’s Der Doppelganger, we felt the sheer, crushing physical weight of grief. This was playing from the heart, not merely from the fingers.Posted in Performances

Pittsburgh Post Gazette

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Ukrainian pianist shows power and poetry in RachmaninoffSaturday, May 01, 2010By Andrew Druckenbrod, Pittsburgh Post-GazettePianist Valentina Lisitsa in PSO debut.Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" didn't incite a near-riot last night at Heinz Hall as it did in its premiere in 1913 in Paris. But the audience was buzzing after Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 was given a bracing performance by pianist Valentina Lisitsa with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra under Manfred Honeck.First, some scene-setting. Until Monday, Ms. Lisitsa had other plans for this weekend. Then she got a call from the PSO's VP of artistic planning Robert Moir, to replace ailing pianist Horacio Gutierrez. Next thing, the Ukrainian-born pianist was debuting in Pittsburgh.To ready himself for a partial performance of this concerto in 1900, Rachmaninoff drank hot red wine to fend off a cold. For Ms. Lisitsa, it was enough to wear a sleeveless burgundy-colored dress that showed off her graceful, yet sinewy, arms full of uncommon strength.All this is an aside to her artistry. Ms. Lisitsa constantly made her scintillating technique the servant of her poetic conception of the piece. A Rachmaninoff concerto can be played like a galloping horse going wire to wire, but she explored the journey. Chief among this was her use of dynamics. From the stout crescendo of the solo opening chords to surprisingly quiet treatment of key areas, such as in the second theme or even in the recapitulation of the main theme in the first movement. Occasionally she let the tempos get a bit brisk, but it all fit an artistic reasoning.She took the kind of liberties with the work that only can be done by someone extremely assured of its style. Only in her encore, Chopin's Etude in C minor from the Op. 25 set, did she show signs of tiring out. Principal clarinetist Michael Rusinek offered gorgeous solo in the middle movement characterized by dovetails and decrescendos that made one's jaw drop. Similarly, the first violins, led by guest concertmaster Nathan Cole, a member of the first violin section of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, showed the results of Mr. Honeck's influence with a graceful and light treatment of that melody later in the movement.Ms. Lisitsa's performance was so powerful that it couldn't be digested by intermission and somewhat upstaged the second half's "Rite," something that Stravinsky would have been furious about. That's just how the psychology of music works sometimes.Also Mr. Honeck and the PSO started a bit ragged and didn't quite get its own mojo going in this work depicting a pagan sacrifice of a maiden to ensure the harvest. Bassoonist Nancy Goeres' solo had that evocative quality to it to open, however. Mr. Honeck did indeed cull some special color out of the second part of "Rite," "The Sacrifice," aided by that eerie muted trumpet duet, performed by Charles Lirette and Neal Berntsen.This was the sort of concert that showed that Mr. Honeck is more than an expert in Viennese music. He has the breadth you'd expect from a music director. He conducted "Rite" with the sharp and precise baton strokes the rhythmic piece needs, and by the time the nine horns, two timpanists and the host of other winds were blasting away we were fully, and gloriously, pulled into Stravinsky's world.Just as important was Mr. Honeck again showing he can be an advocate for American music when on the podium. He gave Richard Danielpour's "Rocking the Cradle," a work commemorating soldiers of the recent wars in Iraq, with depth and delicacy. Potent sections and mysterious ones alike came alive in this compelling tribute as well as questioning work.Program repeats tonight at 8.Andrew Druckenbrod: adruckenbrod_post-gazette.com Blog: Classical Musings at post-gazette.com/music

Berkshire Review

MusicWebInternational

Michael Francis conducts the San Francisco Symphony: Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakoff, Rachmininoff and Beethoven with Lisitsa and Buechner Posted by Steven Kruger• July 17, 2011 • Summer & The Symphony The San Francisco Symphony Davies Hall, San Francisco Friday, July 8, 2011 Michael Francis, Conductor Valentina Lisitsa, Piano Mussorgsky-Rimsky-Korsakoff: A Night on Bald Mountain Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Opus 18 Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade, Opus 35 Saturday, July 9, 2011 Michael Francis, Conductor Sara Davis Buechner, Piano Beethoven: Overture to The Creatures of Prometheus, Opus 43 Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-Flat major, Opus 73, Emperor Beethoven: Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Opus 67 If the ebullience surrounding every squeak made by the San Francisco Symphony last Friday and Saturday is any measure, the orchestra's summer season is in fine hands. On the podium for much of the month has been Michael Francis, and waiting in the wings pianists Valentina Lisitsa and Sara Davis Buechner, all to dazzle and command in their own ways. About which more in a moment. Summer concerts are a special art and a fine test for the temperament and ability of musicians. While accuracy and sight-reading abilities reflect the latter, there is a special dimension of celebration and showmanship involved, and the treacherous challenge to popularize without diminishing. So it is a delight to report that the programs I attended in Davies Hall sported no colored lights, no floral wreaths, trotted out no talkative or, worse, awkward masters of ceremony, and contained no "special occasion" works of dubious provenance. Just classic music, and very well played it was. Remarkably so, with what must have been little rehearsal. Friday and Saturday's audiences were hearteningly young, and if there was a concession to summer informality, it would be the sight of their elders "cutting a rug" to a dance band in the lobby before curtain time. I expect many of them had never seen "the Cleveland Chicken" done properly. Say what you will of San Francisco, but the old generation didn't fall off the turnip truck. Of course, there was the usual seasonal "deconstruction" applied to onstage dress. Most of the orchestra showed up in sleek black summer clothes, as if preparing for a well-ventilated burglary. But the crimes of fashion were to be pleasing ones, except for a hapless and rather large second violinist, whose over-the-hill T-shirt stood out purple in the floodlights. And on the podium, David Niven! Well, not precisely. But Michael Francis, by all accounts, is what fifty years ago would have been called "A nice young Englishman." I suggest the notion as a winning combination of grace under pressure, considerate manners, good humor and uncomplaining good character. (This, mind you, is from a time before hard-edged rockers with bad complexions and worse behavior changed public perceptions of the British artistic persona...) Francis exhibits remarkable ease on the podium. He belongs there. His gestures are easily understood by the audience and always seem just specific enough to be followed by an audible change in the orchestra. And he uses his height to pull off moments of real lunging energy. But he does not preen in profile, like Maazel, or stand ceremonially before the orchestra looking like its owner at a dinner party, as Temirkanov does. Once in a blue moon, Francis will close-out a diminuendo with a finger-flutter, learned no doubt from his LSO mentor Valery Gergiev, but that is the limit of his eccentricity. Friday's concert opened with Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain, in the Rimsky-Korsakov version. This is a much tighter and more logical piece than the composer's original, and benefits greatly from the soothing "dawn" episode Rimsky inserted to conclude the tone poem. The original version is ineptly orchestrated. Mussorgsky allows for sounds at the top and bottom of the spectrum, but doesn't seem to know what harmonies to employ for filling-in the middle. Mostly, to one's amazement, he simply doesn't bother. Rimsky-Korsakov makes no such errors. The piece virtually voices itself, and Michael Francis led a straightforward and percussively powerful account of it. I wondered then, as I still do, if the consolational ending had enough breadth and stillness to it. But summer concerts tend to be about energy, not nostalgia. A jury of sorts may still be out on how well Michael Francis does with the big tragic works and their rapt and emotional silences. Similarly, I have encountered slower, eerie, brooding performances before of the Rachmaninoff Second Concerto--very different from the straightforward, uncomplicated account set before us on Friday, but that is not to disparage it. Indeed, Valentina Lisitsa's debut in the piece was almost beyond stunning. Michael Francis is well over six feet tall. But the audience held its breath when Valentia Lisitsa made her entrance. It was as though a nearly seven-foot mermaid statue had suddenly appeared to play the piano--with cascading hair in gold-leaf! Listeners familiar with Litsitsa's remarkable YouTube videos of Chopin---who have seen the way they are lit, as well as how they are played---will not be surprised to learn of the spell she then wove with our audience. Lisitsa exhibits a remarkable sense of visual atmospherics. She plays with rolling movements of the hands, but leans her body in countervailing anticipation against long phrases, as though hang-gliding. Because she is tall, these movements are very slow and hypnotic, like those of a manta ray "flying" through the ocean. Acoustically, I don't know of any pianist whose passagework sounds more even and effortless than Lisitsa's. But I think her special strength is to have found a perfect midrange sonority, ideal for a pianist who loves Chopin. Lisista's playing sounds like a clear stream flowing over rounded pebbles, light, gleaming, glinting but never spiked and cutting. There exist heavy-toned, velvety-river pianists, like David Fray, who might make more of Brahms, perhaps. But I've never heard the center of the keyboard sound so cleanly satisfying, so tonally transparent. Michael Francis has recently collaborated with Valentina Lisitsa in a recording of the Rachmaninoff Concerti, still "in the can," and indeed, one could see that their interpretation last week had more nuance than a summer concert would lead one to anticipate. This was fast Rachmaninoff, the same tempo taken by the composer himself in his 1929 recording with Leopold Stokowski. And Lisitsa surely knows it well, since the second great melody in the first movement, which ultimately leads to a well-known horn passage, was performed with a slow sighing manner in its fall-away phrases--just as Rachmaninoff himself played it. Another special high point was the conclusion of the second movement cadenza, where Lisitsa's pedal technique allowed for some unfamiliar lingering dissonances. All in all, this was the stuff of fascination, and the audience was simply beside itself with pleasure. Lisitsa's encore, the Chopin Nocturne in E-Flat, Op.9 No. 2, was breathlessly received. Michael Francis perched on a riser to listen to it, at ease like a schoolboy. Scheherazade followed after intermission, delivered in the usual two-fisted non-Russian manner. If this were a Russian orchestra and hours had been spent achieving subtleties of timbre and meaning, one might come up with something like Gergiev's Kirov recording and say "Look what can be done with the music!" Though even there, Gergiev's slow tempi can bore at times. Michael Francis just played the music straight for excitement. Perhaps Toscanini would have sounded like this. Timpani were tight, brass were forthright, the slow movement moved, and the whole thing crashed admirably on the rocks. Saturday Night's all-Beethoven concert had a similar directness to it. Michael Francis launched forth with an intense performance of "The Creatures of Prometheus" overture, which is perhaps as close as Beethoven gets to the sure-fire whirlwind of Mozart's Marriage of Figaro. One wonders how Beethoven could ever have achieved success as a ballet composer. His music is so un-sensous, seemingly blunt and awkward and so frequently written in octaves, that the whole notion seems as unlikely as Richard Nixon playing the piano. But then, of course, Richard Nixon DID play the piano..... Sara Davis Buechner, continuing our San Francisco tradition of tall pianists, next joined Michael Francis for an intense, riveting performance of the Beethoven "Emperor" concerto. A fantasy video of Valentina Lisitsa might show her performing underwater at an aquarium. A fantasy video of Sara Davis Buechner would surely take place in a courtroom. An attractive woman in her own right, yet somehow a bit overpowering, Buechner conveys the relentless musical zeal of a forensic accountant. Perhaps one could term her the Dayle Hinman of pianists. This was no-nonsense, detailed Beethoven, tonally unremarkable, which is perhaps a failing, but exciting and worth hearing. The slow movement did nothing to equal, though, the transcendently beautiful playing, still remembered after more than fifty years, achieved by the Chicago Symphony strings in their famous recording with Reiner and Cliburn. Michael Francis brought the evening to a close with Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. The piece has been "under the fingers" of the orchestra lately with MTT, and a few years ago Blomstedt gave a fine, exciting and tight performance. As before with Mchael Francis, swiftness and power were the order of the day. Performances of Beethoven's Fifth tend to fall into two categories: "Thundering Herd Beethoven" or "Attack-Dog Beethoven". This account was unrelenting and fast and chased you down. But it would have benefitted from slower cadences as the four- note motif bit your arm off! This is the trick Karajan eventually learned for his 1978 Beethoven cycle with the Berlin Philharmonic. Broaden the attack at the two brass and timpani iterations, charge ahead with the rest. This was almost over before it began. One could argue, as well, that SF's clarinets don't sound sufficiently soft and "European" to do full justice to the Beethoven sonority, though the bassoon was spectacularly atmospheric. But then we are beginning to compare a one-rehearsal run-through with a higher notion of perfection than could be attempted here. And it isn't every day that a conductor comes along who is so reliably exciting and such a quick study. In the small world of symphony conductors, Michael Francis is the real thing. And the world has noticed.

MWI

Music Web International

Valentina Lisitsa combines an imperious sweep with aristocratic poise andsensitivity Lisitsa’s performance of the Chopin Nocturne was, to my taste, sublime and faultless. This was the most captivating performance of this familiar work I have ever heard – one contrived by a man of crisp intellect, expressing a serenity of outlook with exquisite aristocratic sensibility. The performer was a woman completely at home in this milieu. Her pace was quite fleet, but with no sense of hurry – let alone anything as vulgar as haste or as demeaning as self-indulgent delay. She allowed all the time in the world for the Nocturne to waft through the skies at its own alert-minded pace. She gave it light and shade firmly – with the mere stflick of an instruction through her fingers. She disdained heavy rubato as a medium for emphasizing emotion unnecessarily. Instead, she lightened or gave weight to the touch of her fingers on the piano keys – a matter of variations in quality of sound produced from physical contact. She conveyed heartbreak or release simply through touch. Music Web International

Ambito Financiero
Slipped Disc
Chicago Classical
Pittsburgh Post Gazette
Berkshire Review
MWI

BIO

With her multi-faceted playing described as "dazzling", Valentina Lisitsa is at ease in a vast repertoire ranging from Bach and Mozart to Shostakovich and Bernstein. Her orchestral repertoire alone includes more than forty concerti. She admits to having a special affinity for the music of Rachmaninoff and Beethoven and continues to add to her vast repertoire each season. In May 2010, Valentina Lisitsa performed the Dutch premiere of Rachmaninoff’s “New 5th” Concerto in her debut with the Rotterdam Philharmonic, and in August 2011 she will make her debut with the Orchestra Sinfonica Brasileira under the baton of Maestro Lorin Maazel. Previous highlights include debuts with the Chicago Symphony, Seattle Symphony, WDR Cologne, Seoul Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony and the Pittsburgh Symphony, collaborating with conductors Manfred Honeck, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, and Jukka-Pekka Saraste, among others. Her 11-12 season will feature debut performances with the Helsinki Philharmonic, the Colorado Symphony and recitals at Ravinia, Teatro de Colon in Buenos Aires and the Casals Festival. Ms. Lisitsa has recorded 3 independently released DVDs, including her best-selling set of Chopin's 24 Etudes, which long held the coveted #1 spot on the Amazon music video list. A champion in the use of new media, Ms. Lisitsa pushes traditional boundaries to reach out audiences around the globe. With more than 28 million YouTube channel views, Valentina Lisitsa is one of the most sought-after classical musicians on the Web. Last summer, thousands of music fans worldwide witnessed bedazzled the live broadcast of Ms. Lisitsa’s practice sessions, allowing her to show a different aspect of her artistic persona. For two weeks, world audiences watched Ms. Lisitsa learn and prepare to the utmost detail almost 4 hours of new music in daily 14 hour long sessions. Similar initiatives followed for the recording sessions of her upcoming CD’s, receiving the enthusiastic approval and support from fans around the world. In addition, Ms. Lisitsa has recently completed recordings of the complete concerti of Rachmaninoff and Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini with the London Symphony Orchestra under conductor Michael Francis.For more information, please visit www.valentinalisitsa.com.Valentina Lisitsa is represented worldwide by Tanja Dorn at IMG Artists.