George-Emmanuel Lazaridis | piano
Over the past 25 years, George-Emmanuel Lazaridis’s appearances have received great critical acclaim from audiences and critics alike, recognising him as one of the finest pianists of his generation. His recordings have been rapturously received by the press – ‘[...] special enough to be beyond comparison’ (BBC Music Magazine), and of ‘[...] such drama, power and concentration, that they hold their own even if you stop to consider celebrated recordings of Horowitz, Argerich, Brendel and Zimmerman’(Gramophone). His recording of Liszt’s Sonata in B minor and Paganini’s Caprices for Linn Records was recently selected among the top fifty best releases of the decade by The Pianist magazine, and his release of Schumann’s Papillons on SOMM has been ranked amongst the top five best performances on record, alongside keyboard giants such as Sviatoslav Richter and Claudio Arrau.
Mentored by Yonty Solomon at the Royal College of Music in London, he has also worked with Alfred Brendel, Ruth Nye, Douglas Finch, Domna Evnouhidou and Paul Badura Skoda.
Born in Greece in 1978, Lazaridis enjoys a flourishing international career that has taken him from the US and Mexico to Europe, Russia, Egypt and the Middle East. He has performed in major venues such as the Royal Albert Hall, Barbican, Concertgebouw, the St Petersburg Philharmonia Hall, Palais des Beaux Arts, Festspielhaus, Cologne’s Philharmonie, Stockholm’s Konserthuset, Cité de la Musique in Paris, Vienna’s Konzerthaus and Musikverein, the Athens Megaron, Birmingham’s Symphony Hall, the Palace of the Arts in Budapest, New York’s Carnegie Hall, Merkin Hall and Princeton’s Richardson Auditorium among others.
He has collaborated with renowned ensembles and artists such as the Medici Quartet, the Ysaye Quartet, the Vienna Octet, Leonidas Kavakos, and Michael Tilson Thomas. He has performed with leading orchestras such as the St Petersburg and the Royal Philharmonic orchestras, the Wiener Kammer Orchester under the direction of Sir Neville Marriner, Yuri Temirkanov, Maxim Schostakovic among many others.
Lazaridis has also built a wide reputation as a composer and pedagogue, receiving commissions and giving masterclasses worldwide. He is Artistic Director at Thessaloniki Concert Halls “Megaro”, Greece