A world star in the space of five minutes – even outside the world of music: in 2024, the young pianist Alexandre Kantorow played Maurice Ravel's »Jeux d'eau« on a bridge over the Seine in pouring rain at the opening ceremony of the Paris Summer Olympics. Estimates are that 1.5 billion people watched the ceremony on screen. Of course in the music world, Alexandre Kantorow has of course been a big name for several years now.
As Artist in Residence , the French pianist is performing several concerts in the Elbphilharmonie and Laeiszhalle in the 2024/25 season. In the »Elbphilharmonie Talk« before his first solo recital in the Grand Hall, Elbphilharmonie colleague Tom R. Schulz asks him about the Olympics, of course, and Alexandre Kantorow also talks about his childhood, his experiences behind the scenes of the prestigious Tchaikovsky Competition and his admiration for jazz musician Keith Jarrett.
Alexandre Kantorow at the Elbphilharmonie
As artist-in-residence, Alexandre Kantorow performs a number of concerts in Hamburg in the 2024/25 season.
Alexandre Kantorow's career has been one cleverly orchestrated crescendo since 2019, when he won the Moscow Tchaikovsky Competition – in the Elbphilharmonie as well. Since his first appearance in an Easter concert called »Slow Music« with Teodor Currentzis in the Grand Hall almost three years ago, the young French virtuoso has been a guest at the Elbphilharmonie on several occasions, among them in the top young talent series FAST LANE. In the 2024/25 season he is already Artist in Residence, with five concerts spread over the year. A year and a half after his recital in the Recital Hall, he sold out the Grand Hall in November 2024 with a solo programme, of which the Hamburger Abendblatt subsequently wrote that it contained enough notes for two concerts.
In conversation, he proves to be an artist is as subtle as he is down-to-earth, friendly and with a good sense of humour. He looks back with due detachment at the Olympic rain adventure in Paris and at the extreme conditions prevailing at the Tchaikovsky Competition, where the final concert lasted till three in the morning. He talks about an intensive and instructive piano lesson with Daniel Barenboim, reflects on his fondness for composers such as Liszt, Brahms and Beethoven and confesses his admiration for Keith Jarrett.
Alexandre Kantorow also corrects a false impression that his German Wikipedia entry conveys about his family background: it praises his father, the violinist and conductor Jean-Jacques Kantorow, but doesn't mention his mother at all. But it was actually his mother, a violinist, who played a decisive role in her the young Alexandre's musical development. Nor did she protest when his supposed aptitude for the violin turned out to be a big mistake: »The first time I played the violin, everything worked. But after that I got worse from one day to the next.«
