Musica Viva Australia: Kirill Gerstein

The Art of the Impossible.

Kirill Gerstein is a showman, philosopher, and poet of the piano. He grew up playing jazz, switched to classical, and won the Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition at just 22. Since then he has carved out a formidable reputation as a fearless artist who makes the impossible sound easy.

For his Melbourne concerts, he is scaling new heights of virtuosity: Liszt’s power Polonaise in E and Schumann’s Viennese romp, Carnival of Vienna, and the wildly difficult, wildly entertaining transcriptions of eccentric piano nerd, Leopold Godowsky. In the same program, he dives deep into the profundity of Chopin’s Polonaise Fantasie and gives the world premiere of Transcendental Etude, a new commission from Australian Liza Lim.