Daniil Trifonov: four mainstage Carnegie Hall dates; returns to Cleveland Orchestra, CSO, & others; new DG double album; & more in 2025–26
(September 2025) — Over the coming season, Grammy-winning Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov makes four appearances at New York’s Carnegie Hall. On the storied venue’s main stage, he performs a new solo recital program that also takes him on a tour of California; gives a Schubert lieder recital with Matthias Goerne, as a high point of their extensive transatlantic tour; joins the Orchestre National de France for two great French piano concertos, as the final stop of a U.S. tour; and takes part in the venue’s star-studded gala to celebrate the “50th Anniversary of the Concert of the Century.” Trifonov’s other 2025–26 highlights include solo recitals in Vancouver, Zurich, and France; a European duo recital tour with Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider; and returns to The Cleveland Orchestra and the Chicago, Cincinnati, Oregon, Seattle, and National Symphonies, as well as to Germany’s Bavarian State Orchestra, France’s Orchestre national de Lyon, the Netherlands’ Rotterdam Philharmonic, and Italy’s Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, with which he tours Austria and Germany. In addition, October brings the physical and digital release of Tchaikovsky, the pianist’s new double album for Deutsche Grammophon. As The Times of London notes, he remains “without question the most astounding young pianist of our age.”
New DG double album: Tchaikovsky
Trifonov is an exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist, whose discography has been recognized with a Grammy Award for “Best Instrumental Solo Album,” Opus Klassik’s “Instrumentalist of the Year/Piano” award, Gramophone’s “Artist of the Year,” and other international honors. On the forthcoming double album, Tchaikovsky, he interprets the Russian composer’s rarely performed early Piano Sonata in C-sharp minor, his Children’s Album, and the “Thème original et variations” from his Six Piano Pieces, together with the Concert Suite from his ballet The Sleeping Beauty, as transcribed for piano by Mikhail Pletnev. This collection reveals a side of Tchaikovsky that is often overlooked. Trifonov explains: “We think of him as an archetypical Romantic. But, particularly in his younger years, Tchaikovsky found joy in his close relationships and emotional comfort in his family.” Already available for pre-order and due for release on October 3, the double album will be available on CD and vinyl, as well as for streaming and digital downloads. Click here to see the first pre-release track, on which Trifonov plays the fourth movement from The Sleeping Beauty.
Solo recitals in NYC, California, Vancouver, & Europe
“An adventurer intent on exploring overlooked realms of the repertory” (The New York Times), Trifonov is known for his thoughtfully curated solo recital programs. This season, he pairs Robert Schumann’s First Piano Sonata with relative rarities by three of his own Russian compatriots: Taneyev’s Prelude and Fugue, Myaskovsky’s Second Piano Sonata, and the evocative miniatures of Prokofiev’s Mimoletnosti (“Visions Fugitives”). This program is the vehicle for Trifonov’s mainstage recital at Carnegie Hall (Dec 13). It was after one of his numerous previous sold-out Carnegie recitals that The New York Times hailed him as “one of the most awesome pianists of our time.”
As well as performing it at Vancouver’s Chopin Society (April 19), Zurich’s Tonhalle (Dec 2), and other destinations in Europe, this program takes Trifonov on a four-city tour of California (Sep 24–30). The tour includes a second program in La Jolla, for which Trifonov couples the Schumann sonata with music by Tchaikovsky (Sep 25).
Concertos: returns to Carnegie Hall, Cleveland Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, & others
Trifonov makes two orchestral appearances at Carnegie Hall this season. For the first, he joins Cristian Mӑcelaru and the Orchestre National de France for two great French piano concertos: Saint-Saëns’s Second and Ravel’s jazz-inflected Concerto in G (Nov 9). This represents the final stop of a U.S. tour that also sees Trifonov perform Saint-Saëns’s concerto with the same forces in Worcester, MA (Nov 7) and Brookville, NY (Nov 8), before reprising it next spring with the Seattle Symphony and Xian Zhang (April 23 & 25). Early next year, he reunites with Mӑcelaru at the Cincinnati Symphony for Beethoven’s Second Piano Concerto (Jan 10 & 11), shortly before undertaking the same work with Esa-Pekka Salonen at the Chicago Symphony (Jan 29–Feb 1). It was as that orchestra’s 2024-25 artist-in-residence that Trifonov recently “reinforced his standing as one of the finest pianists of our time” (Chicago Sun-Times).
Trifonov devotes most of his remaining orchestral engagements to Brahms’s two piano concertos. He performs the German composer’s First with both Washington, D.C.’s National Symphony Orchestra under Gianandrea Noseda (Jan 15–17) and Munich’s Bavarian State Orchestra under Kirill Petrenko (Dec 7–9). Bookending these collaborations are fall accounts of Brahms’s Second with The Cleveland Orchestra under Music Director Franz Welser-Möst (Oct 9–11) and winter/spring ones with France’s Orchestre national de Lyon under Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider (Feb 27 & 28), the Netherlands’ Rotterdam Philharmonic under Lahav Shani (May 21 & 22), and Rome’s Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia under Daniel Harding at concerts in the Italian capital and in Vienna, Munich, and Hamburg (March 12–20). Praising the pianist’s “big, warm, noble interpretation” of the concerto, Classical Voice writes: “In agitated passages, Trifonov sounded like a heaven-storming Brahmsian; in quiet passages, he sounded like a poet lost in a world of fantasy and ecstasy.”
To complete his concert lineup, Trifonov plays Shostakovich’s First Piano Concerto with Portland’s Oregon Symphonyunder David Danzmayr (April 16) and returns to Carnegie Hall for a special Gala Evening with vocalists Renée Fleming, Joyce DiDonato, and Isabel Leonard; fellow pianists Emanuel Ax, Evgeny Kissin, and Lang Lang; Kent Tritle and the Oratorio Society of New York; and Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the NYO-USA All-Stars. Celebrating the “50th Anniversary of the Concert of the Century” (May 5), this star-studded event takes place almost exactly half a century after Carnegie Hall’s historic 85th anniversary benefit concert in May 1976, which featured performances by members of the New York Philharmonic, the Oratorio Society of New York, Leonard Bernstein, Vladimir Horowitz, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, and Mstislav Rostropovich.
Duo tours with Goerne & Szeps-Znaider in North America & Europe
Trifonov has long enjoyed an “intense affinity” (The New York Times) with veteran German baritone Matthias Goerne. This fall, they give recitals of Schubert’s three great song cycles on a North American tour, comprising accounts of Schwanengesang in Quebec (Oct 13), Boston (Oct 24), and Houston (Oct 29); of Winterreise in Toronto (Oct 16), Dallas (Oct 27), and at Washington’s Kennedy Center (Oct 21); and of Die schöne Müllerin in New York, where the concert marks the first of the pianist’s four upcoming appearances at Carnegie Hall (Oct 19).
He and Goerne reunite next spring for similar recitals in Europe, undertaking all three cycles at the Leipzig Gewandhaus(Nov 18–22), Vienna Musikverein (Nov 24 –28), and Philharmonie de Paris (March 23–27), as well as reprising Schwanengesang in Baden-Baden, where – as at all their recitals of Schubert’s last, posthumously published cycle – Trifonov also plays the G-major Piano Sonata, D.894, which Schumann considered “the most perfect in form and substance” of all of Schubert’s sonatas (Nov 30).
To round out his 2025-26 offerings, Trifonov rejoins Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider, with whom he recently gave a “spell-binding performance” (Seen and Heard International) of chamber repertoire in Leipzig. On their upcoming European tour, the Danish conductor-violinist once again exchanges his baton for a bow, this time for violin and piano music by Clara and Robert Schumann, Beethoven, and Webern, in Humlebæk, Denmark (May 8), Oslo (May 10), Berlin(May 11), Vienna (May 13), Munich (May 15), Hamburg (May 14), and Hannover (May 16).
Tchaikovsky
Daniil Trifonov, piano
Label: Deutsche Grammophon
Release date: October 3, 2025
Formats: 2CDs, 2LPs, streaming, and digital downloads
Disc 1:
TCHAIKOVSKY: “Thème original et variations” from Six Pieces
TCHAIKOVSKY: Piano Sonata in C-sharp minor
Disc 2:
TCHAIKOVSKY: Children’s Album
TCHAIKOVSKY / transcr. Mikhail PLETNEV: Concert Suite from The Sleeping Beauty
Daniil Trifonov: 2025–26 engagements
Sep 24–30: California solo recital tour
Sep 24: La Jolla, CA
Sep 26: Aliso Viejo, CA (Soka Performing Arts Center)
Sep 28: Berkeley, CA (University of California, Berkeley; Cal Performances)
Sep 30: Santa Barbara, CA (University of California, Santa Barbara)
TANEYEV: Prelude and Fugue
PROKOFIEV: Mimoletnosti (“Visions Fugitives”)
MYASKOVSKY: Piano Sonata No. 2
R. SCHUMANN: Piano Sonata No. 1
La Jolla, CA
Sep 25
TCHAIKOVSKY: Piano Sonata in C-Sharp minor, Op. Posth. 80
TCHAIKOVSKY: Children’s Album
R. SCHUMANN: Piano Sonata No. 1
Oct 9–11
Cleveland, OH
The Cleveland Orchestra / Franz Welser-Möst
BRAHMS: Piano Concerto No. 2
Oct 13–29: North American lieder recital tour with Matthias Goerne, baritone
Oct 13: Quebec, QC
SCHUBERT: Piano Sonata in G, D.894
SCHUBERT: Schwanengesang
Oct 16: Toronto, ON
SCHUBERT: Winterreise
Oct 19: New York, NY (Carnegie Hall)
SCHUBERT: Die schöne Müllerin
Oct 21: Washington, D.C. (Kennedy Center)
SCHUBERT: Winterreise
Oct 24: Boston, MA (Celebrity Series of Boston)
SCHUBERT: Piano Sonata in G, D.894
SCHUBERT: Schwanengesang
Oct 27: Dallas, TX
SCHUBERT: Winterreise
Oct 29: Houston, TX
SCHUBERT: Piano Sonata in G, D.894
SCHUBERT: Schwanengesang
Nov 7–9: U.S. tour with Orchestre National de France / Cristian Măcelaru
Nov 7: Worcester, MA
Nov 8: Brookville, NY
Nov 9: New York, NY (Carnegie Hall)
SAINT-SAËNS: Piano Concerto No. 2
RAVEL: Piano Concerto in G [Nov 9 only]
Nov 18–30: European lieder recital tour with Matthias Goerne, baritone
Nov 18: Leipzig, Germany (Gewandhaus)
SCHUBERT: Die schöne Müllerin
Nov 20: Leipzig, Germany (Gewandhaus)
SCHUBERT: Winterreise
Nov 22: Leipzig, Germany (Gewandhaus)
SCHUBERT: Piano Sonata in G, D.894
SCHUBERT: Schwanengesang
Nov 24: Vienna, Austria (Musikverein)
SCHUBERT: Winterreise
Nov 26: Vienna, Austria (Musikverein)
SCHUBERT: Die schöne Müllerin
Nov 28: Vienna, Austria (Musikverein)
SCHUBERT: Piano Sonata in G, D.894
SCHUBERT: Schwanengesang
Nov 30: Baden-Baden, Germany (Festspielhaus)
SCHUBERT: Piano Sonata in G, D.894
SCHUBERT: Schwanengesang
Dec 2 & 3: solo recitals in Switzerland
Dec 2: Zurich (Tonhalle)
Dec 3: Basel (Stadtcasino)
TANEYEV: Prelude and Fugue
PROKOFIEV: Mimoletnosti (“Visions Fugitives”)
MYASKOVSKY: Piano Sonata No. 2
R. SCHUMANN: Piano Sonata No. 1
Dec 7–9
Munich, Germany
Bavarian State Orchestra / Kirill Petrenko
BRAHMS: Piano Concerto No. 1
Dec 13
New York, NY
Carnegie Hall
Solo recital:
TANEYEV: Prelude and Fugue
PROKOFIEV: Mimoletnosti (“Visions Fugitives”)
MYASKOVSKY: Piano Sonata No. 2
R. SCHUMANN: Piano Sonata No. 1
Jan 10 & 11
Cincinnati, OH
Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra / Cristian Mӑcelaru
BEETHOVEN: Piano Concerto No. 2
Jan 15–17
Washington, DC
National Symphony Orchestra / Gianandrea Noseda
BRAHMS: Piano Concerto No. 1
Jan 29–Feb 1
Chicago, IL
Chicago Symphony Orchestra / Esa Pekka Salonen
BEETHOVEN: Piano Concerto No. 2
Feb 21
Toulouse, France
Solo recital:
TANEYEV: Prelude and Fugue
TCHAIKOVSKY: Children’s Album
MYASKOVSKY: Piano Sonata No. 2
Feb 22
Bordeaux, France
Solo recital:
TANEYEV: Prelude and Fugue
PROKOFIEV: Mimoletnosti (“Visions Fugitives”)
MYASKOVSKY: Piano Sonata No. 2
R. SCHUMANN: Piano Sonata No. 1
Feb 27 & 28
Lyon, France
Orchestre national de Lyon / Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider
BRAHMS: Piano Concerto No. 2
March 12–20: Concerts and tour with Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia / Daniel Harding
March 12–14: Rome, Italy
March 17: Vienna, Austria
March 18: Munich, Germany
March 20: Hamburg, Germany
BRAHMS: Piano Concerto No. 2
March 23–27
Paris, France
Philharmonie de Paris
Lieder recitals with Matthias Goerne, baritone
March 23
SCHUBERT: Winterreise
March 25
SCHUBERT: Die schöne Müllerin
March 27
SCHUBERT: Piano Sonata in G, D.894
SCHUBERT: Schwanengesang
April 16
Portland, OR
Oregon Symphony / David Danzmayr
SHOSTAKOVICH: Piano Concerto No. 1
April 19
Vancouver, BC
Chopin Society
Solo recital
TANEYEV: Prelude and Fugue
PROKOFIEV: Mimoletnosti (“Visions Fugitives”)
MYASKOVSKY: Piano Sonata No. 2
R. SCHUMANN: Piano Sonata No. 1
April 23 & 25
Seattle, WA
Seattle Symphony / Xian Zhang
SAINT-SAËNS: Piano Concerto No. 2
May 5
New York, NY
Carnegie Hall
NYO-USA All-Stars / Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Gala Evening: “50th Anniversary of the Concert of the Century”
With Renée Fleming, soprano; Joyce DiDonato and Isabel Leonard, mezzo-sopranos; Emanuel Ax, Evgeny Kissin, and Lang Lang, piano; Oratorio Society of New York / Kent Tritle
Additional artists TBA
May 8–13: Duo recital tour with Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider, violin
May 8: Humlebæk, Denmark (Louisiana Museum of Modern Art; reduced program) (Oslo Opera House)
May 10: Oslo, Sweden (Oslo Opera House)
May 11: Berlin, Germany (Konzerthaus)
May 13: Vienna, Austria (Konzerthaus)
May 14: Hamburg, Germany (Elbphilharmonie)
May 15: Munich, Germany (Herkulessaal)
May 16: Hannover, Germany (NDR Konzerthaus)
C. SCHUMANN: Three Romances
R. SCHUMANN: Violin Sonata No. 2
WEBERN: Four Pieces for Violin and Piano
BEETHOVEN: “Kreutzer Sonata”
May 21 & 22
Rotterdam, Netherlands
Rotterdam Philharmonic / Lahav Shani
BRAHMS: Piano Concerto No. 2