CIM Alum Daniil Trifonov Wins Grammy Award

Pianist Daniil Trifonov (AC ’13, AD ’15, Babayan) won the Grammy Award for Best Classical Instrumental Solo on Sunday, January 28, 2018. His album Transcendental – Franz Liszt’s Transcendental Etudes – was released on Deutsche Grammophon (DG) in October 2016. This album marks the first time the complete etudes have been recorded for DG.

Trifonov, 26, has earned four Grammy nominations for his recordings, and this was his first win.

Trifonov came to fame in 2011 when he won the Arthur Rubenstein Piano Competition in Tel Aviv and the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. He is also known as a composer; he premiered his Piano Concerto in E-flat minor at CIM in 2014.

Alex Ross of The New York Times says: “Daniil Trifonov creates a furor. …[as did] Vladimir Horowitz…, Paderewski…, Sviatoslav Richter, the young Martha Argerich, and the young Evgeny Kissin… Furor pianists exhibit intelligence as well as dexterity. They give a hint of the unearthly, the diabolical.… Trifonov has a rare combination of monstrous technique and lustrous tone. The characteristic Trifonov effect is a rapid, glistening flurry of notes that hardly seems to involve the mechanical action of hammers and strings.”