Jonathan Biss

Jonathan Biss has been widely acclaimed as a pianist who “has the rare ability to make you sit up and take notice as if you were hearing a well-known piece for the very first time.” His four recordings for EMI Classics have given rise to a vast appreciative audience and have earned him plaudits in the North American and European press. Following his debut recording of Beethoven and Schumann piano works, Biss was promoted to the main label at EMI. His first recording on contract of Schumann’s Fantasie, Arabesque and Kreisleriana was awarded the Diapason d’Or de l’Année, in the Jeune Talent category in November 2007 and his second recording featuring Beethoven sonatas, released in autumn 2007, received the Edison Award for Best Solo Recital Recording in June 2008.

Biss’s most recent recording of Mozart’s Piano Concertos Nos 21 and 22 with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Biss both performing and conducting the orchestra, has also received widespread critical acclaim. BBC Music Magazine awarded the disc five stars and wrote “These are altogether exceptionally fine accounts, with well-judged tempos … allied with playing that is unfailingly but subtly expressive. No matter how many versions of these great works you already have, you should definitely consider making room in your collection for this one.”

Biss is fast establishing himself as an artist at the very highest level and appears with the leading Orchestras in the USA including the Boston Symphony, the Cincinnati Symphony, the Chicago Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera, the National Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Symphony, the Pittsburgh Symphony and San Francisco Symphony Orchestras. Similarly in Europe, he has received invitations from such ensembles as the London Philharmonic Orchestra, NDR Hamburg, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Rotterdam Philharmonic, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Leipzig’s Gewandhaus and the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin.

He has collaborated with many distinguished conductors such as Alsop, Barenboim, Conlon, Davies, Dutoit, Levine, Maazel, Marriner, Morlot, Nézet-Séguin, Robertson, Slatkin, Tilson-Thomas and Zinman.

Jonathan Biss is also a committed recitalist and chamber musician. He represents the third generation in a family of musicians; his grandmother was Raya Garbousova (for whom Samuel Barber composed his Cello Concerto), and together with his mother Miriam Fried he has appeared in many of the principal chamber music societies in the USA.

He is a regular visitor, too, to festivals and recital halls in Europe, returning regularly to play at London’s Wigmore Hall, Paris, Brussels, Salzburg (both in the Kammermusik in Mozarteum series and in the Mozartwoche with the Kremerata Baltica); in the 2009-10 season, he will also give a series of recitals with the Elias Quartet at the Brighton Festival, at Birmingham Town Hall and in Antwerp and Copenhagen.

Jonathan Biss has been presented with numerous awards, including the 2002 Gilmore Young Artist Award, the Lincoln Center’s Martin E. Segal Award, an Avery Fisher Career Grant, the Andrew Wolf Memorial Chamber Music Award and the 2003 Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award. He was the first American chosen to participate in the BBC’s New Generation Artist programme, and in 2005 he received the Leonard Bernstein Award, which was presented to him at the Schleswig-Holstein Festival in Germany.