English Biography

“To say that Mr. Lifschitz made his playing look easy would not be quite accurate. What he offered was a performance of such poetry that the question of whether executing it was difficult hardly came to mind.”

The New York Times

“Lifschitz maximised the instrument’s potential for colour and tonal variety…the gentle, unshowy authority of his stage manner, that he was most persuasive, emphasising the work’s qualities as living music as opposed to historic monument.”

The Guardian

Konstantin Lifschitz has earned a reputation for performing demanding masterpieces and  extraordinary feats of endurance with great honesty and exceptional, persuasive beauty. He  appears in the world’s most prestigious concert halls and with the outstanding orchestras, both  in recitals and concert programs. In addition, he has recorded numerous CDs. His  performances are praised as “magical moments” and “deeply satisfying” (The Independent),  as well as “with movingly natural expression” (The New York Times). 

Konstantin Lifschitz was born in 1976 in Kharkiv, Ukraine. At the age of five, he began  piano lessons at the Gnessin Music School in Moscow. Tatiana Zelikman was his most  important teacher. After graduating, he continued his studies in the UK and Italy where his  other teachers included Alfred Brendel, Leon Fleisher, Theodor Gutmann, Hamish Milne,  Charles Rosen, Karl-Ulrich Schnabel, Vladimir Tropp, Fou T’song, and Rosalyn Tureck,  mostly at the Lieven International Piano Foundation. 

In the early 1990s, Konstantin Lifschitz received a grant from the Russian Cultural  Foundation. Around that time, he started to perform in European capitals such as Paris,  Amsterdam, Vienna, Munich, and Milan. He toured Japan with the Moscow Virtuosi under  the baton of Vladimir Spivakov, while in Europe he toured with the St Petersburg Symphony  Orchestra under Yuri Temirkanov, and also performed with Mischa Maisky and Gidon  Kremer in many European cites. In 1995 he received the ECHO Klassik Award of “The Best  Emerging Artist of the Year” for his first recording, and the following year he was nominated  for a Grammy award for Bach’s Goldberg Variations

Since his sensational debut recital in the October Hall of the House of Unions in Moscow at  the age of 13, Konstantin Lifschitz performs solo recitals at major festivals and the most  important concert venues worldwide and appears with leading international orchestras  including the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony  Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, New Zealand  Symphony Orchestra, Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, Frankfurt Radio Symphony  Orchestra, Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Konzerthausorchester Berlin, NDR Symphony  Orchestra Hamburg, MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra, SWR Symphony Orchestra,  Stuttgart Philharmonic Orchestra, Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Mozarteum Orchestra  Salzburg, Academy of St Martin in the Fields, RAI National Symphony Orchestra or Danish  National Symphony Orchestra. 

As a soloist Konstantin Lifschitz has collaborated with leading conductors such as Mstislav  Rostropovich, Vladimir Spivakov, Yury Temirkanov, Sir Neville Marriner, Bernard Haitink,  Sir Roger Norrington, Fabio Luisi, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Marek Janowski, Eliahu Inbal,  Mikhail Jurowsky, Andrey Boreyko, Dimitry Liss, Dmitry Sitkovetsky, Alexander Rudin and  Christopher Hogwood. 

As a chamber musician, Konstantin Lifschitz has performed with artists such as Gidon  Kremer, Maxim Vengerov, Vadim Repin, Misha Maisky, Mstislav Rostropovich, Natalia  Gutman, Dmitry Sitkovetsky, Lynn Harrell, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Daishin Kashimoto,  Leila Josefowicz, Carolin und Jörg Widmann, Sol Gabetta, Eugene Ugorski, Alexander  Knyazev and Alexander Rudin. 

Highlights of the recent seasons included a solo recital in the Grand Hall of the  Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, invitations to give piano recitals at the Tchaikovsky Hall and the  “Zaryadye” in Moscow, a Bach cycle in Kaohsiung and Taipei with a total of nine concerts,  and a “Play and Conduct” concert with the Musica Viva Chamber Orchestra. He has also appeared at numerous festivals, including VERÃO CLÁSSICO, the Les Nuits Pianistiques  Festival in Aix-en-Provence, and the Würzburg Bach Days. 

Konstantin Lifschitz has increasingly appeared as a conductor. He has conducted ensembles  and orchestras such as the Moscow Virtuosi, the Century Orchestra Osaka, the Solisti Di  Napoli, the Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra Wernigerode, the St. Christopher Chamber  Orchestra Vilnius, the Moscow Musica Viva Chamber Orchestra, the Lux Aeterna Ensemble  and the Gabriel Choir Budapest, the Dalarna Sinfonietta Falun, and the Arpeggione Chamber  Orchestra Hohenems. Conducting from the piano, he has recorded Bach’s seven harpsichord  concertos with the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, which led to another European tour. In 2019,  he successfully conducted the China tour of the Lucerne Chamber Philharmonic, which he  founded and artistically directed. 

As a prolific recording artist, he has been releasing numerous CDs and DVDs, many of which  have received exceptional reviews. Amongst them are 8 recordings for the Orfeo label  including Bach’s Musical Offering, the St. Anne Prelude and Fugue and Three Frescobaldi  Toccatas (2007), Gottfried von Einem Piano Concerto with the Vienna Radio Symphony  Orchestra (2009), Brahms Second Concerto and Mozart Concerto K. 456 under Dietrich  Fischer-Dieskau (2010), Bach The Art of Fugue (2010), the complete Bach Concertos for  keyboard and orchestra with the Stuttgart Kammerorchester (2011), Goldberg Variations  (2015) and “Saisons Russes” with works of Ravel, Debussy, Stravinsky and Jakoulov (2016).  In 2008, a live recording of Lifschitz’s performance of Bach Well-Tempered Clavier (Books  I and II) at the Miami International Piano Festival was released on DVD by VAI. In 2014,  Beethoven’s complete violin Sonatas with Daishin Kashimoto was released by Warner  Classics. In 2020 to celebrate the composer’s 250 years jubilee Lifschitz released CD and  Vinyl Box of Beethoven’s Complete 32 Piano Sonatas with Alpha Classics (Live recordings).  His most recent CD release, dedicated to Bach and Peter Seabourne’s toccatas, came out in  2022, and digitally, his latest Bach recording accompanies and illustrates his Bach  Wanderbook (Book of Hours, Days, and Seasons with J.S. Bach). 

Konstantin Lifschitz is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music in London and has taught  his own class as artistic professor at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts  since 2008.