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Welcome to our 61st Season
(2010-2011)

The fourth concert of the 2010-2011 Season is
Ilya Yakushev
on Monday, February 28, 2011:

Gold Medal winner of the 2005 World Piano Competition, Ilya Yakushev is a fresh and exciting new presence in the piano world. He has performed at major venues on three continents. Yakushev is a native of St. Petersburg, Russia, where he won his first award at age 12 as a prize winner of the Young Artists Concerto Competition. In this tour, he is offering an interesting video presentation of the paintings that inspired Mussorgsky's Pictures At An Exhibition. The pictures will appear on a screen onstage as Yakushev plays the music.

Ilya Yakushev toured the US in the spring of 2006 and presented a solo recital at Alice Tully Hall in April, 2007. As Grand Prize Winner of the 2004 Mannes College Concerto Competition, Mr. Yakushev made his Tully Hall debut as soloist in Prokofiev's Third Piano Concerto with The Mannes Orchestra under the baton of Metropolitan Opera conductor Paul Nadler, a performance that was subsequently broadcast on WQXR-FM.

Ilya Yakushev in concert black
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Mr. Yakushev has further proven his abilities as a concerto soloist by organizing and producing three concerts at Mannes, accompanied by orchestras consisting of Mannes students and alumni. In the spring of 2005, he performed a concert featuring Beethoven's Third Concerto and Prokofiev's Second Concerto. In March 2006, he performed three piano concerti in one evening: Saint-Saens' Second Concerto, Ravel's Concerto in G, and Prokofiev's First Concerto, in a concert conducted by his teacher at Mannes, legendary pianist Vladimir Feltsman. And in February 2007, he went one step further, performing four concerti in one evening in his final performance as a student at Mannes, also conducted by Maestro Feltsman.I

 

 
 
Ilya Yakushev in sports coat

Some press reviews of Ilya Yakushev's performances:

Yakushev’s performance was most notable, not for the bravura pyrotechnics, but for playing more lyric middle passages softly and with considerable expression. (Too many pianists pound this piece at only two dynamic levels – forte and fortissimo.) It was a sort of nice delayed encore to Yakushev’s excellent Prokofiev performance over the weekend.

The balance and tempos were excellent throughout, and the second movement funeral march (perhaps the finest chamber-music movement ever written) was superb, even with Yakushev contending with the limitations of the Clinton Center piano (including a squeak in one of the pedals that must have been maddening) and a consistently wrong note every time the first violin played the main theme (I can only think perhaps there’s a misprint in Maddox’s music).

– Eric E. Harrison in Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, September 20, 2006

Ilya Yakushev ... play[ed] the Prokofiev. This was his local debut, and hopefully it won't be his last time here.

Prokofiev created an incredibly radiant and effusive work that is a wonderful showpiece, not only for the soloist but also for the orchestra, and Yakushev made the bravura passages, of which there are many here, look easy. He is a remarkable pianist with impeccable technique. And while much of the piano writing is percussive, particularly in the outer movements, Yakushev still managed to find the lyricism that infuses this music and which is too often overlooked by pianists. His reading was refreshingly expressive yet forceful. His phrases were crisp, and he brought a precision to his playing that this music demands. His interpretation was vibrant, electrifying and utterly compelling.

– Edward Reichel, Desert News, Salt Lake City, UT, February 27, 2009

There are many samples of Ilya Yakushev's performances available online. Some of them are at the links on the right.

You can also visit his website for much more information about him and his music. You can also friend him on Facebook for more information

more to listen on his website.

 

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updated: March 3, 2011