Key Pianists, Now in its Third Season, Presents Celebrated Pianists Misha & Cipa Dichter at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall February 21, 2018

Entering the sixth decade of a noted global career, pianist Misha Dichter will be presented by the Key Pianists concert series on Wednesday evening, February 21^st, 2018 at 7:30 pm at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall. Mr. Dichter’s program will feature solo piano works by Schubert and Scriabin; he will be joined by his wife—pianist Cipa Dichter—in piano duets by Schubert and Copland.

The full program follows:

Franz Schubert (1797-1828)                          Fantasia in F minor, D. 940
                                                                        I. Allegro molto moderato —
                                                                        II. Largo —
                                                                        III. Scherzo: Allegro vivace —
                                                                        IV. Finale. Allegro molto moderato
Aaron Copland (1900-90)                                El Salón México, arr. by Leonard Bernstein (1918-90)
Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915)                     Etude in F sharp, Op. 42 No. 4
                                                                        Etude in B flat minor, Op. 8 No. 11
Franz Schubert                                                 Sonata in A, D. 959
                                                                        I. Allegro
                                                                        II. Andantino
                                                                        III. Scherzo: Allegro vivace – Trio: Un poco più lento
                                                                        IV. Allegretto – Presto

Tickets are $40 and available for purchase at: https://www.carnegiehall.org/Calendar/2018/02/21/MISHA-AND-CIPA-DICHTER-0730PM | CarnegieCharge 212-247-7800 | Box Office at 57th St and 7th Ave.

Founded by pianist Terry Eder, the Key Pianists series has become increasingly imaginative and important in the New York City concert landscape. "Many wonderful pianists playing with wisdom, insight, sensitivity, and beauty are not heard in New York,” says Ms. Eder. “These stellar artists, as well as New York audiences, deserve an event to share this extraordinary music-making." This new concert series presents pianists in repertoire of special significance to them. The first season in 2015-16 featured three recitals by internationally lauded pianist Peter Takács. His series, “The Beethoven Experience,” explored some of the composer’s most influential works from his early, middle, and late career. The first recital in the series earned Mr. Takács praise from noted music critic George Grella of New York Classical Review: “Takács led the music brilliantly…fluid and supremely elegant…sensitive and agile” (October 19, 2015).

In 2016-17, critical praise followed. Writing for New York Classical Review, Eric Simpson described Ann Schein’s rendition of Chopin’s Sonata No. 3 in B Minor: “There was almost a Beethovenian confidence in Schein’s approach to the music, as she combined a firm attack with splendid, singing melody. […] In the trio she made the instrument glow. The Largo showed a strong affinity for the quiet intensity of Chopinian bliss, sublime and rolling.” In reviewing Terry Eder’s recital, Frank Daykin of New York Concert Review termed Terry Eder “a musician’s musician” and wrote: “Ms. Eder, who is the generous patron of, and visionary behind, the Key Pianists series, showed us why she is herself ‘key.’” The season concluded with a recital by internationally renowned pianist Sara Davis Buechner, a multifaceted recital of Japanese and French music in collaboration with mime dancer and Japanese mask maker Yayoi Hirano. Reviewing this event for The New York Times, Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim wrote, “It showcased the breadth of Ms. Buechner’s artistry, spanning thundering fortissimos and chiseled passagework, as well as lyrical moments colored by a poetic sensitivity that was tempered by wit and judicious restraint.” (June 2, 2017)

Entering the sixth decade of a distinguished global career, pianist Misha Dichter remains one of America’s most popular artists, extending a musical heritage from the Russian Romantic School, as personified by Rosina Lhevinne, his mentor at The Juilliard School, and the German Classical style that was passed on to him by Aube Tzerko, a pupil of Artur Schnabel. He also studied composition and analysis with Leonard Stein, a disciple of Arnold Schoenberg.

A recognized champion of Leonard Bernstein’s Symphony #2, The Age of Anxiety, Misha Dichter performed this great work with David Zinman and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the 2016 Ravinia Festival. During the current season, he collaborates on The Age of Anxiety with Maestro Zinman and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, David Itkin and the University of North Texas Symphony Orchestra and Ward Stare and the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, while summer 2018 includes another performance with Gerard Schwarz at North Carolina’s Eastern Music Festival.

Mr. Dichter has performed and recorded with some of the most illustrious conductors of the 20th and 21st centuries, among them Leonard Bernstein, Pierre Boulez, Colin Davis, Lawrence Foster, Valery Gergiev, Carlo Maria Guilini, Bernard Haitink, Mariss Jansons, Kiril Kondrashin, Erich Leinsdorf, James Levine, Lorin Maazel, Neville Marriner, Kurt Masur, Riccardo Muti, Eugene Ormandy, Carlos Prieto, André Previn, Simon Rattle, Gerard Schwarz, Robert Shaw, Leonard Slatkin, Robert Spano, William Steinberg, Michael Tilson Thomas, Hans Vonk, Edo de Waart, David Zinman and Pinchas Zukerman, while notable chamber music collaborations have included violinists Itzhak Perlman, Mark Peskanov and Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, cellists Lynn Harrell and Yo-Yo Ma and the American, Cleveland, Emerson, Guarneri, Harlem, St. Petersburg and Tokyo string quartets. Mr. Dichter has been seen frequently on national television and was the subject of an hour-long European television documentary.

Building a legendary, iconic and musically omnivorous discography, Mr. Dichter has recorded with Philips, RCA, MusicMasters, and Koch Classics labels, encompassing the major scores of Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Gershwin, Liszt, Mussorgsky, Schubert, Schumann, Stravinsky, and Tchaikovsky. A noted exponent of Liszt’s piano works and a champion of the composer’s forward-looking contributions to the development of music, Mr. Dichter was honored in 1988 with the “Grand Prix International du Disque Liszt,” presented for his Philips recording of the master’s piano transcriptions. His first recording with Cipa Dichter is a three-CD set of Mozart’s complete piano works for four hands and is available on the Nimbus label. American Record Guide called the album “an unmitigated delight,” and Music Web International named it a 2005 “Record of the Year.”

In 2007, Mr. Dichter took a three-month hiatus from the concert stage to deal with the onset of Dupuytren’s Disease, a contracting of one or more fingers. After totally successful surgery and physical therapy, Mr. Dichter returned to public performance and became a supporter and spokesperson for the American Society for Surgery of the Hand. A brief audio/video presentation, “Dupuytren’s Contracture: Misha Dichter – A Pianist Reborn,” is accessible on YouTube.

Mr. Dichter is an accomplished writer, having contributed articles to many leading publications, including The New York Times. He is also a talented sketch artist, and in 2012 he released an e-book of his music-related illustrations, “A Pianist’s World in Drawings,” with Rosetta Books. Available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and iTunes, the e-book compiles over 50 original drawings that were created over the span of Mr. Dichter’s half-century career.

Fiercely dedicated to extending his artistic traditions to new generations of pianists, Mr. Dichter conducts widely attended masterclasses at major conservatories, universities and music festivals, including Aspen, Curtis, Eastman, Harvard, Juilliard, Yale and Holland’s Conservatorium van Amsterdam.

Born in Shanghai to parents who had fled Poland at the outbreak of World War II, Misha Dichter and his family moved to Los Angeles when he was two; he began studying the piano at five. At the age of 20, while enrolled at the famed Juilliard School in New York City, he won the Silver Medal at the 1966 International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, which helped launch an enviable concert career. Shortly after, Mr. Dichter was the guest soloist in a Tanglewood performance of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with Erich Leinsdorf and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, a concert that was broadcast nationally on NBC and subsequently recorded for RCA. In 1968, he made his New York Philharmonic debut under the baton of Leonard Bernstein, collaborating on the same concerto. Appearances with the Berlin Philharmonic, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw Orchestra, the principal London orchestras and every major American orchestra soon followed.

Misha Dichter and his wife, pianist Cipa Dichter, met at The Juilliard School as students of the legendary Rosina Lhevinne, made their debut joint appearance at the Hollywood Bowl in 1972, four years after their marriage. Subsequently, the Dichters have performed in recital and with major orchestras around the globe.

Misha and Cipa Dichter’s North American engagements have included recitals in all of the major cities in the United States and Canada, as well as appearances with the symphonies of Baltimore, Chicago, Cincinnati, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, and Seattle. Abroad, they have been presented in the music capitals of France, Germany, Holland, Spain, and Switzerland.

The Dichters are also frequent and popular guest artists at many of the leading summer music festivals, among them Aspen, Caramoor, Hollywood Bowl, the Mann Center (Philadelphia) Mostly Mozart (New York City) and Ravinia. Following one performance at Mostly Mozart, The New York Times declared: “One was struck not only by the synchronism of their musical impulses, but also by the vigor and elegance of the execution.”

Misha and Cipa Dichter’s first recording—a three-CD album of Mozart’s complete piano works for four hands plus four-hand arrangements by Busoni and Grieg—was released by Musical Heritage Society. American Record Guide called the recording “an unmitigated delight,” while The Washington Post commented that the music is “witty, melodious and superbly polished. So is the Dichters’ performance.” Gramophone praised “the Dichters’ direct and uncluttered interpretations” as well as their “exuberant rhythmic drive.” Music Web International names the album a “Recording of the Year” for 2005. The Dichters first began playing Mozart together when they were students at Juilliard in the 1960s, and it was a Hollywood Bowl performance of Mozart’s E-flat double concerto that marked their first joint appearance.

Cipa Dichter was born in Brazil of Polish-Russian parents and had her initial piano lessons at the age of six. She made her professional debut at 16 with the Orquestra Sinfônica Brasileira and came to the United States shortly thereafter to study at The Juilliard School.

Misha and Cipa Dichter reside in New York City, in a household ruled over by Baxter, their amiable Springer Spaniel. They have two sons and five grandchildren. In 2017, the Dichters joined the Advisory Council of New York City’s Musicians Foundation (est. 1914).

For further information, please call Hemsing Associates at (212) 772-1132 or visit www.hemsingpr.com.
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