“Some musicians express their deepest thoughts through playing. Others have a gift for beautifully articulating in words what they do and why they do it. Both qualities happen to reside in pianist Jonathan Biss”
Philadelphia Enquirer, October 2011
Jonathan Biss is fast establishing himself as an artist at the very highest level in the USA and in Europe. He is engaged by the Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony with Antonio Pappano, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, National Symphony, New York Philharmonic with both Alan Gilbert and Andris Nelsons, Philadelphia Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony/Nelsons and San Francisco Symphony orchestras. In Europe, with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, NDR Hamburg and NDR Hannover, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Swedish Radio Symphony, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Berlin Staatskapelle and Leipzig Gewandhaus.
Jonathan Biss is a committed recitalist and chamber musician. In January 2011, he played a recital in the Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall which was received with great warmth, “he played a poetic and surging performance. The reflective finale ended in rapt repose” New York Times. He regularly plays in the major recital series’ in the US and in Europe; he has twice opened Master Piano Series at the Concertgebouw. He has played at the Salzburg, Lucerne, and Edinburgh Festivals, at the Beethovenfest, Bonn and at the Mariinsky Concert Hall in St. Petersburg. He is a frequent guest to the International Piano Series in London and to the Wigmore Hall, where in the 2012/13 season, he will present a four-part Schumann series, which will also be presented at Carnegie Hall, in San Francisco, and in the Concertgebouw, in Amsterdam.
Jonathan Biss has recently embarked on recording the complete Beethoven Sonatas for Onyx Classics with the first disc due for release in January 2012. He has a fine discography to date with his four recordings for EMI Classics earning him plaudits in the North American and European press. His recording of Schumann’s Fantasie, Arabesque and Kreisleriana was awarded the Diapason d’Or de l’Année, in the ‘Jeune Talent’ category in November 2007 and his second recording of Beethoven sonatas, released in autumn 2007, received the Edison Award for Best Solo Recital Recording in June 2008.
Biss has also released a recording of Kurtag and Schubert sonatas, recorded live at the Wigmore Hall and released on Wigmore Hall Live. BBC Music Magazine wrote, “the music unfolds with a natural-sounding inevitability … There is nothing showy about his piano-playing; everything feels completely natural, innately musical, tightly controlled and deeply felt.”
Jonathan Biss has been recognised with numerous awards, including the 2002 Gilmore Young Artist Award, Lincoln Center’s Martin E. Segal Award, an Avery Fisher Career Grant, the Andrew Wolf Memorial Chamber Music Award, and the 2003 Borletti-Buitoni Trust. He was the first American chosen to participate in the BBC’s New Generation Artist programme and in 2005, he received the Leonard Bernstein Award presented to him at the Schleswig-Holstein Festival in Germany.
He represents the third generation in a family of musicians. His grandmother, Raya Garbousova, was the cellist for whom Samuel Barber composed his Cello Concerto and his mother, Miriam Fried, is a distinguished violinist and teacher. Jonathan Biss has recently joined the faculty of the Curtis Institute.
In the forthcoming season, Jonathan Biss will return to the Royal Concertgebouw with Robin Ticciati, Stockholm Philharmonic with Sakari Oramo, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and he will make his debut with the Dresden Staatskapelle with Sir Colin Davis. He plays in recital in the Berlin Philharmonic piano series, in a duo recital with Mitsuko Uchida at the Mozartwoche, Salzburg and he will return to the International Piano Series at the Southbank, London as well as to the Societe Philharmonique in Brussels.
Jonathan Biss is represented by Jessica Ford at Intermusica, jford@intermusica.co.uk.
2011-12 Season / 619 words. Not to be altered without permission. Please destroy all previous biographical material.
Berlin Philharmonie recital / Beethoven, Janacek
“Word has got around that pianists with an incredible sensitivity are here to play the Steinway. 31-year-old Jonathan Biss fits perfectly into this series... Such a programme is only put together by someone who feels total confidence and is not afraid of making any bold statements.
Of slender appearance he is a powerful performer. The way he opens Beethoven’s Sonata No. 5 in C minor with a no-frills drive forward - sinewy and with rich sound - immediately draws one in. Biss doesn’t overly emphasise the fragility that hides behind this vitality. Not after each phrase, but after each work lurks an abyss. The way he immediately lifts the fog in Janacek’s In the Mist without leaving the pieces’ elementary questioning impressed as much as his fresh approach to the Moonlight Sonata. Biss developed Janacek’s piano sonata between anticipation and grief as an intimate connoisseur and in Beethoven’s Les Adieux Sonata’s furious frenzy of reunion, he allows room for searching. Big applause!”
Der Tagesspiegel, April 2012
Washington Performing Arts Society recital / Beethoven, Chopin, Janacek
“Before he played a note, the audience was his. Biss has that perfectly natural, yet immediately communicative presence granted to few artists. When he plays, it is to the accompaniment of absolute silence in the room, the rapt attention that audiences pay to only the best music-making.
Biss’s unqualified identification with Beethoven’s affective ways and means, his ability to inhabit the music wholeheartedly, lent his performances a psychological cohesion and authenticity.
Biss built Janacek’s In the Mists musical argument with such skill and subtlety that the tragic climax was little short of devastating... Biss’s approach to Chopin is every bit as original as his interpretations of Beethoven.
A piece from Schumann’s Kreisleriana was the encore rounding out what was undoubtedly one of the most powerfully eloquent recitals heard in Washington this season.”
The Washington Post, February 2012
International Piano Series, Queen Elizabeth Hall / Beethoven, Chopin, Janacek
“This is no-frills Beethoven, uncompromisingly direct and a reminder of how much the music itself flouts convention. The ricocheting opening of Sonata No.5 had something of the compressed, titanic energy we associate primarily with the fifth and seventh symphonies. The full tone Biss deployed here was replaced in Les Adieux by sinewy textures, wonderfully suited to its mix of desolation and turbulent complexity...
Les Adieux came at the end of a programme that demanded huge reserves of emotion, as well as technical finesse. The Beethoven sonatas were separated by music by Janacek and Chopin. Biss was revelatory in the Janacek, wringing every shred of intensity from In the Mists.”
Tim Ashley, The Guardian 4*, January 2012
“The youthful fire of the Beethoven C Minor Sonata, Op.10 No.1, was a good place for him to start, plunging in headlong but with enough control to keep a grip on the rhythms. The chances are that Biss will find plenty of con brio (with fire) throughout, as he feels closest to Beethoven the fighter, throwing his whole body into the music’s jabbing sforzando punches.”
Richard Fairman, Financial Times, January 2012
“Out of these hyperactive textures Janacek emerge heart-warming lyrical statements that throb with the suffering of humanity. Here Biss rose to the occasion splendidly, as he did in a pair of Chopin pieces which successfully explored their poetic sensibility.”
Barry Millington, Evening Standard, January 2012
“He urges each expressive phrase to the maximum, and not for a second does he allow the music’s own energy to carry him.
This can produce wonderful things. Biss is a pianist of wide range, and in this recital he placed two works by Janacek next to Chopin, book-ending their overtly impassioned and introverted music with the very different expressivity of Beethoven.
Biss has a particular gift for highlighting these changes in emotional colour.
But it’s not just these momentary changes he makes eloquent. Biss always keeps his eye on the long perspective. In Janacek’s suite In the Mists, the last movement’s opening phrase returns again at the end, and Biss revealed all the emotional freight it had acquired in between.
All this hinged on Biss’s gift for making a complicated texture seem transparent and eloquent. It gave his performances of two Chopin pieces a dignified and epic quality, without even a trace of pianistic bravura.”
Ivan Hewett, The Telegraph, January 2012
“It was good to see Biss jump in with the fifth sonata Op.10 No.3 – these early works are remarkably daring in conception, and their slow movements adumbrate Beethoven at his most oracular. The opening phrase of the Allegro molto was smart as a whip, followed immediately by an answering theme of honeyed sweetness: the contrast was extreme, and absolutely right. Biss delineated the Adagio – a long essay in motion and stillness, sound and silence - with marvellous assurance, hurling bolts of lightning into a placid summer landscape. The last movement came like an explosion of muscular energy, with its surprises sprung to maximum effect right down to the astonishing key-change in the last few bars.”
Michael Church, The Independent 4*, January 2012
Curtis Institute of Music / Beethoven
“Some musicians express their deepest thoughts through playing. Others have a gift for beautifully articulating in words what they do and why they do it. Both qualities happen to reside in pianist Jonathan Biss.”
Philadelphia Enquirer, October 2011
San Francisco Symphony Orchestra with Peter Oundjian / Beethoven Piano Concerto No.5
“Biss, 30, has grown into a marvelous player, one who clearly feels at home with Beethoven. His opening flourishes and trills were saturated with color and feeling. Rhythmically incisive, his playing got at Beethoven's fierceness, then melted through the composer's otherworldy reveries.”
Mercury News, April 2011
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra with Andris Nelsons / Beethoven Piano Concerto No.2
“It was one of the most impressive performances he has given at Heinz Hall.
Fast tempi for the outer movements were comfortable for the pianist, whose personality was perfectly attuned to the piece from a decisive point of view. His articulation was clear as a bell. Every one of Beethoven's gestures had integrity under his fingers.
Biss played Beethoven's second cadenza for the first movement, one that was written decades after the concerto itself. Biss made it thoroughly convincing.”
Pittsburgh Tribune, March 2011
London Symphony Orchestra with Sir Colin Davis / Beethoven Piano Concerto No.3
“Two lightning flash runs... announced the arrival of Beethoven's third piano concerto and pianist Jonathan Biss at the keyboard in terrifically dramatic mode...
Biss's was the account of a true troubled traveller, full of changes of character - now the shouter, now the singer, now the imp - subsumed into one coherent and compelling voice.
The Largo saw some excellent pedalling that bled colours but never swamped them and the lolling head of the piano was perfectly put to sleep and then roused to action. Just as well. There are strange apparitions to be encountered in the mostly jaunty Allegro con brio and both Davis and Biss relished the arrival of every single one.”
The Arts Desk.com, March 2011
Philadelphia Chamber Music Society recital / Janacek, Rands, Schumann, Beethoven
“The tone is exquisite, and the technique masterly without drawing attention to itself. But the power comes in how Biss feels the music...
The encore was yet another startling personal statement, a revelation even: the Andante cantabile from Mozart's Piano Sonata No.10 in C major (K.330)... it was straightforward, unaffected grace until the last poignant bars, which, hushed and delicate, brought the curtain down with nearly devastating beauty.”
The Philadelphia Enquirer, January 2011