Stephen Kovacevich · piano

BIOGRAPHY

Stephen Kovacevich is one of the most revered pianists of his generation. With an international career spanning more than six decades, he has long been recognised as one of the most sought-after performers: "A musician totally absorbed in his craft, his interpretations are like no one else's and always come straight from the heart: musical messages of wisdom, peace, resignation and hope" (The Washington Post).

Born in Los Angeles in 1940, he laid the foundations for his career as a concert pianist at the age of eleven. After moving to England to study with Dame Myra Hess, he made his European debut at Wigmore Hall in 1961. Since then he has performed with many of the world's finest orchestras and conductors, including Hans Graf, Bernard Haitink, Kurt Masur, Yannick Nezet-Seguin, Sir Simon Rattle and Sir Georg Solti. Stephen Kovacevich is a dedicated chamber musician who has worked with such luminaries as Lynn Harrell, Jacqueline du Pré and Josef Suk as well as the Amadeus and Cleveland quartets over the course of his long career. Today, Kovacevich regularly performs with violinists such as Nicola Benedetti, Renaud Capuçon and Alina Ibragimova, cellists Gautier Capuçon, Steven Isserlis and Truls Mørk, flautist Emmanuel Pahud and the Belcea Quartet.

He can look back on many years of collaboration, particularly with the record companies Philips and EMI. In 2008, he re-recorded Beethoven's Diabelli Variations, 40 years after his first recording of this work. This Onyx recording earned him the Classic FM Gramophone Editor's Choice Award (2009) and the Gramophone Magazine Top Choice Award (2015). To mark his 75th birthday in 2015, Decca released a limited edition 25-CD box set of his complete works recorded for Philips.