Emil Gilels

One of the greatest pianists of the 20th century, Emil Gilels is celebrated for a highly personal combination of powerful virtuosity, burnished sonority, emotional intensity, and musical honesty. Born in 1916 in Odessa, in what was then the Russian Empire and is now Ukraine, Gilels’ early playing revealed a force of nature. When he won the First All-Union Competition of Performers in Moscow in 1933, he astonished with Liszt’s Figaro Fantasy (1842), and his 1935 recording is one of the finest examples of his youthful exuberance and stupendous technique. After graduating from the Odessa Conservatory in 1935, he studied with Heinrich Neuhaus in Moscow, where he gave the first performance of Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata No. 8 in 1944. Gilels was shy, modest, and self-critical, but his reputation spread widely—he was one of the first Soviet artists allowed to give concerts in the West, and his first tour of America in 1955 was eagerly anticipated. Gilels’ career traces a journey from exultant virtuosity to a more subtle and inward-looking pianism. His 1949 recording of Saint-Saëns’ Piano Concerto No. 2 (1868) is one of the most sparkling and engaging on record, while his cycle of Beethoven’s piano sonatas (sadly not quite complete when Gilels died in 1985) conveys a profound humanity. Above all, Gilels’ artistry is captured in all its facets—its deep poetry, unforced lyricism, and golden sound—in his unmatched 1975 recording of Grieg’s Lyric Pieces.