SEPF Guest Artist Alexander Korsantia

Alexander Korsantia

Dubbed "a major artist" by the Miami Herald and a "quiet maverick" by the Daily Telegraph, pianist Alexander Korsantia has been praised for the "clarity of his technique, richly varied tone and dynamic phrasing" (Baltimore Sun), and a "piano technique where difficulties simply do not exist" (Calgary Sun). The Boston Globe found his interpretation of Pictures of an Exhibition to be "a performance that could annihilate all others one has heard." And the Birmingham Post gushed that "his intensely responsive reading was shot through with a vein of constant fantasy, whether musing or mercurial." Ever since winning the First Prize and Gold Medal of the Artur Rubinstein Piano Master Competition and the First Prize at the Sidney International Piano Competition, Korsantia’s career has taken him to many of the world’s major concert halls, collaborating with renowned conductors such as Valery Gergiev, Gianandrea Noseda, and Paavo Jarvi and orchestras as the Chicago Symphony, Kirov Orchestra and Israel Philharmonic.

Resent seasons bring him to the Cincinnati Symphony, Pacific, Louisville, Oregon, Vancouver, Omaha and Elgin symphonies, a summer stint with the Israel Philharmonic where he performed Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto and the 2nd Brahms Piano Concerto nine times, Israel Chamber Orchestra with Beethoven’s Fourth, Fifth and early E flat major Concerto. In Europe he is heard in Germany on tour with the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse performing Chopin’s 2nd Piano Concerto, RAI Orchestra in Turin performing Rachmaninoff’s Third Concerto, Kirov Orchestra Gergiev conducting with Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on the Theme of Paganini, Oslo Philharmonic with Dvorak Concerto, British Youth Orchestra Noseda conducting with Stravinsky Concerto, Polish Radio Orchestra as well as with the Neuburg Chamber Orchestra. In August 2008 he has toured Brasil with Israel Symphony Orchestra performing Rachmaninoff’s Second concerto. He also gave recitals at the Festival Piano Jacobins in Toulouse, Calgary, San Francisco, Lodz, and his hometown, Tbilisi, Georgia. Other noteworthy engagements have included a televised performance of Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 3 at the White Nights Festival in St. Petersburg; performances at the Stresa Festival in Italy under the baton of Yuri Bashmet; concerts at the Newport, Tanglewood, Vancouver, Gilmore festivals; with the symphony orchestras of Louisville, Brazil, Bogota, Jerusalem and the City of Birmingham, the Georgian State Orchestra, the Kirov Orchestra, the Israel Chamber Orchestra and others. He has also participated in a United States recital tour with renowned violinist Vadim Repin. Bel Air Music and Piano Classics are among the labels Mr. Korsantia has worked with. His new recording of Joseph Bardanashvili’s “Concerto quasi una fantasia” with Ingolstadt Chamber Orchestra is now available.

Current and coming seasons are taking Korsantia to Germany, Poland, Georgia, Italy, France, Israel and US performing recitals and with Isarel Symphony Orchestra, Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional in Mexico City, Louisiana Philharmonic, Ingolstadt Chamber Orchestra, Mannheim, Pacific and Edmonton Symphony Orchestras among others.

Enjoying great popularity in Georgia, his country of birth, in 2004 he was awarded one of the most prestigious national awards, the Order of Honor, bestowed on him by then-President, Eduard Shevardnadze. In 2003 National TV released a full-length documentary about him.

Born in Tbilisi, Georgia, Alexander Korsantia began his musical studies at an early age. Among his mentors are his mother, Sventlana Korsantia and Tengiz Amiredjibi, Georgia’s foremost piano instructor. In 1992, he moved his family to the United States and joined the famed piano studio of fellow Georgian, Alexander Toradze, at Indiana University. Korsantia resides in Boston where he is a Professor of Piano on the faculty of the New England Conservatory.


More information:

• Alexander Korsantia