Mussorgsky - Pictures at an Exhibition / Bach-Busoni - Toccata, Adagio & Fugue +

and began to play by ear and improvise on the piano at the age of two. At six years old, he entered a special school for gifted children, the Moscow Gnessin School of Music, where he was a student of Anna Pavlovna Kantor, who has remained his only teacher. At the age of 10, he made his concerto debut playing Mozart's Piano Concerto K466 with the Orchestra of Ulyanovsky and gave his first solo recital in Moscow one year later.
Mr. Kissin came to international attention in March 1984 when, at the age of 12, he performed Chopin's Piano Concertos Nos.1 and 2 in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory with the Moscow State Philharmonic under Dmitri Kitaenko. This concert was recorded live by Melodia and released by RCA Red Seal in the United States as The Legendary 1984 Moscow Concert.

Kissin's first appearances outside Russia were in 1985 in Eastern Europe, followed a year later by his first tour of Japan. In 1987, he made his West European debut at the Berlin Festival, where he played Tchaikovsky's First Concerto with Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic. In 1988, he toured Europe with the Moscow Virtuosi and Vladimir Spivakov, and also made his London debut with the London Symphony Orchestra under Valery Gergiev. In December of the same year he performed with Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic in an internationally broadcast New Year's concert; the performance was repeated the following year at the Salzburg Easter Festival.

In 1990 Kissin made his first appearance at the BBC Promenade Concerts in London and that same year made his North American debut, performing both Chopin piano concertos with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Zubin Mehta. The following week he opened Carnegie Hall's Centennial season with a spectacular debut solo recital, which was recorded live by RCA Red Seal.

Despite his relative youth, Mr. Kissin has already received a host of awards. When he was just 16, he received the Crystal Prize of the Osaka Symphony Hall for the Best Performance of 1986-his first concert in Japan. In 1991, he received the Musician of the Year Prize from the Chigiana Academy of Music in Siena, Italy. He was a special guest at the 1992 GRAMMY® Awards Ceremony, and his performance was broadcast live to an audience estimated at over one billion viewers. Mr. Kissin was named Musical America's youngest ever Instrumentalist of the Year in 1995. In 1997, he received the prestigious Triumph Award for his outstanding contribution to Russia's culture, one of the highest cultural honours to be bestowed in the Russian Republic, for which he was also the youngest-ever awardee. That year, he was the first pianist to be invited to give a recital at the BBC Promenade Concerts; in 2000, he was the first concerto soloist ever to be invited to play in the Proms opening concert. In May 2001, Mr. Kissin was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Manhattan School of Music.

The pianist's extraordinary musicality and virtuosity have made him one of the most sought-after pianists of his generation. He has appeared with many great conductors, including Claudio Abbado, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Daniel Barenboim, James Levine, Lorin Maazel, and Seiji Ozawa. He makes regular recital tours to the United States, Japan and Europe.

His recordings have received numerous awards and accolades, including the Edison Klassiek in The Netherlands and the Diapason d'Or and the Grande Prix of La Nouvelle Academie du Disque in France. 1988 marked his first studio recording, Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 with Valery Gergiev conducting the London Symphony Orchestra, which was made for RCA Red Seal. Mr. Kissin later recorded Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto for the label, this time with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Seiji Ozawa. Among his other recordings for RCA Red Seal are several solo discs, including music of Chopin, Schumann, Beethoven, Brahms, Franck, and Liszt. The label will release several other recitals by Mr. Kissin in the near future, including the Bach-Busoni Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C major; Glinka-Balakirev's The Lark and Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, which is expected for early 2002. Also being planned is a disc of Schumann, to include the Sonata No. 1 and Carnaval. Christopher Nupen's documentary film Evgeny Kissin: The Gift of Music has recently been released on video and DVD by RCA Red Seal.