Denis Kozhukhin

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Piano
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News

  • 22 September 2023

    Denis Kozhukhin debuts with Düsseldorfer Symphoniker

    Read full article
  • 06 September 2023

    Askonas Holt signs pianist Denis Kozhukhin

    Read full article

Press

  • Brahms chamber music with Janine Janson, Timothy Ridout and Daniel Blendulf

    Wigmore Hall, London
    Dec 2024

    • ***** Kozhukhin, at the centre of everything, was just fabulous. He really does have some very special qualities indeed to bring to Brahms … Kozhukhin and Janine Jansen give a lot of concerts together, and his playing aligns superbly with her quick-fire imagination, inventiveness, sense of shaping a line in a different way she plays it. The unhurried spaciousness of the beginning of the A major Violin Sonata set a tone for the evening.

    • ***** In the violin sonata, Kozhukhin’s opening was warm... Jansen and Kozhukhin contrasted well the intimate, almost prayerful opening with playful bounce in the offbeat rhythms that followed... both players carried us through its lyricism, injected with mysterious diminished piano arpeggios to its richly dramatic conclusion... Right from Kozhukhin’s thundering opening to the Third Piano Quartet, and the dark string response, it was clear this would be a totally committed performance from all four musicians. Kozhukhin set the perpetual motion that drives the finale to its wild conclusion, with the other instruments exchanging thematic material... an intensely passionate performance.

    • ...[Jansen & Kozhukhin] excelled in the central section of the second movement, which tripped along with admirable definition of those rhythms, and in the finale, where the two enjoyed a more assertive musical dialogue... This account exhibited elegance, poise and no little power... the real hero of the performance was Kozhukhin, elevating the heroic elements of a score closely associated with Goethe’s Werther while keeping the nervousness emanating from Brahms’s syncopated rhythms... This was a truly memorable performance, capping an outstanding evening of music making for which all involved should be immensely proud.

  • Rachmaninov 'Piano Concerto No. 4'

    National Symphony Orchestra Washington
    Sep 2023

    • ...[Kozhukhin] attacked the opening theme, in huge block chords, with unbridled power... The first movement had the typical Rachmaninoff-saccharine second theme, which Kozhukhin wisely kept moving, refusing to wallow in its excesses... The second movement, often linked to the jazz-inspired influence of Gershwin, had a world-weary, sighing coolness, led by Kozhuhkin’s understated playing.

  • Ravel 'Piano Concerto in G major'

    BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra & Simone Menezes
    May 2023

    • One superlative performance gave this programme its golden moment - Ravel's gorgeous G major Piano Concerto which, in the hands of Russian pianist Denis Kozhukhin, had every angle covered: dazzling authority, woozy, bluesy seductiveness, electrifying virtuosity and a sense from beginning to end that the course of the argument was resolutely predetermined.

    • The soloist in the first half was Russian pianist Denis Kozhukhin, whose performance of Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G was steeped in dreamy impressionism with hints of sultry blues. His isolation of the solo part’s different voices was expertly executed, perhaps most notably in the middle of the second movement. The introduction of a quiet, discordant melody was so artfully displaced it was like he was employing some kind of instrumental ventriloquism.

  • Ravel 'Piano Concerto in G major'

    Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra & Alain Altinoglu
    Mar 2023

    • [Kozhukhin] demonstrated his excellent level once again... As has been appreciated on previous occasions, the Russian's sound is beautiful and has sufficient presence... He shades beautifully... He translated the fast-paced score in an Apollonian manner and with impeccable momentum, with a good dose of panache and fantasy, very successful realisation of the music's jazzy resonances, and enviable intensity, connecting very well with the baton in a reading in which the rhythmic energy shone through.

  • Schumann, Grieg, Brahms & Schubert

    Teatro Principal de Alicante
    Feb 2023

    • Despite his youth, he showed signs of a musical maturity that places him at the top of the world performers, with an exceptional brilliance in both technical and expressive aspects. The result was an exquisite performance from the first note to the last, with an emotional connection to the audience... Almost twenty minutes of excellent music in which Kozhukhin knew how to convey the emotional depth and sophistication that evokes the inner world of childhood, with a poetic interpretation of the highest level that did justice to the mastery of the composer's musical writing... Kozhukhin's undeniable talent and mastery of technique masterfully drew the contrasts between moments of subtlety and elegance, and those full of energy and dynamism, until dissipating the final tension with a decisive movement full of vivacity.

  • Grieg 'Piano Concerto in A minor'

    Royal Scottish National Orchestra & Jonathon Heyward
    Nov 2022

    • **** ...[Kozhukhin's] playing was a focused wave of energy that shot a bolt of lightning through Grieg’s music... Any time I’ve heard Kozhukhin before, it has been the dynamism and energy of his playing that impressed me most, so I was expecting a reading of the concerto that would shake the foundations and reinforce the piece’s muscularity. Not a bit of it! The keynote of Kozhukhin’s playing was its fluidity and lyricism... In this he chimed perfectly with the orchestral sound coming from the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and conductor Jonathon Heyward, sound that was as beautiful as it was amenable, phrased as though to illuminate Grieg’s music delicately, never forcefully or garishly... If only all late stand-ins were as successful!

    • ... Kozhukhin’s dash and daring adding a thrilling edge to its weathered familiarity... Kozhukhin’s deep-rooted expressive tone was a potent, characterising feature.

  • Ravel 'Piano Concerto No.2'

    Barcelona Symphony Orchestra, Rachmaninov Festival
    Mar 2022

    • On the one hand, a brilliant, shining, majestic sonority, overflowing with energy and with the power to resolve the passages of chords and octaves so characteristic of this Second Concerto. On the other hand, an expressive elegance that allowed [Kozhukhin] to delve into the slow passage of the second movement of the Concerto with a contemplative romantic poetry, beautiful in diction and elegant in outline.