Legato Arts and W Preserve present Nina Kotova, cello and Vassily Primakov, piano in Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall Monday, February 11, 2019, at

Legato Arts and W Preserve present cellist Nina Kotova and pianist Vassily Primakov at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall on Monday evening, February 11th at 8:00 PM. Ms. Kotova and Mr. Primakov will perform a concert of works including Brahms Sonata No. 1 and Shostakovich’s Sonata in D minor along with Arvo Pärt’s Fratres.

 Tickets are on sale now for the February 11th  concert and are available through CarnegieCharge (212-247-7800), online at www.carnegiehall.org and at the Carnegie Hall box office located at 57^th St. and 7^th Ave. in New York City. 

 About the Artists

 According to Newsweek magazine, Russian-born cellist Nina Kotova “is a fantastically gifted cellist. Very expressive, imaginative… she has a powerful stage presence”. Time magazine states: “She is a musician of high seriousness and real talent”. She has been the subject of numerous features in Vogue, Elle, Hello, The Sunday Telegraph and the Wall Street Journal. Nina Kotova has appeared on the covers of Classic FM, Gramophone China, Il Venerdi Italia and Reader's Digest and on television on A&E’s “Breakfast with the Arts” and the “Charlie Rose Show.”

                  Nina Kotova studied at the Moscow Conservatory and the Musikhochschule in Cologne, giving her first performance as a soloist with orchestra at the age 11 and graduating summa cum laude. She made her Western debut at Wigmore Hall, performed at the Barbican Centre in London in 1996, released her chart-topping debut album for Philips Classics and made her Carnegie Hall debut in 1999.

                  Ms. Kotova has performed in recital and as a soloist with major orchestras across the globe touring the capitals of Europe, Asia and the Americas. Ms. Kotova has performed at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and at the Berlin Philharmonic and has collaborated with leading artists and conductors such as Vladimir Jurowski, Jean Yves Thibaudet, Antonio Pappano, John Malkovich, Helene Grimaud, Jeremy Irons, Joshua Bell, Lang Lang, Sarah Chang, Sting and many more. She has had the distinction of performing live in broadcast from Red Square in Moscow, for the Imperial family of Japan and at Buckingham Palace in a special concert for Prince Charles.

A composer herself and a champion of contemporary music, Ms. Kotova has commissioned and premiered numerous works from leading composers. Her Cello Concerto was premiered in San Francisco to rave reviews. The San Francisco Chronicle said: “Like Rihm in 1974, so Kotova in 2000 stands in defiance of last century’s modernism and the new simplicity of so much recent music. Her Cello Concerto is a complex, gripping affair.”

 Vassily Primakov’s first piano studies were with his mother, Marina Primakova.  He entered Moscow’s Central Special Music School at the age of eleven as a pupil of Vera Gornostaeva, and at 17 came to New York to pursue studies at the Juilliard School with the noted pianist, Jerome Lowenthal.  At Juilliard Mr. Primakov won the William Petschek Piano Recital Award, which presented his debut recital at Alice Tully Hall, and while at Juilliard, aided by a Susan W. Rose Career grant, he won both the Silver Medal and the Audience Prize in the 2002 Gina Bachauer International Artists Piano Competition.  Later that year, Primakov won First Prize in the 2002 Young Concert Atists (YCA) International Auditions.  In 2007 he was named the Classical Recording Foundation’s “Young Artist of the Year.”  In 2009, Primakov’s Chopin Mazurkas recording was named “Best of the Year” by National Public Radio and that same year he began recording the 27 Mozart piano concertos in Denmark.  BBC Music Magazine(November, 2010) praised the first volume of Primakov’s Mozart concertos: “The piano playing is of exceptional quality:  refined, multi-coloured, elegant of phrase and immaculately balanced, both in itself and in relation to the effortlessly stylish orchestra.  The rhythm is both shapely and dynamic, the articulation a model of subtlety.  By almost every objective criterion, Vassily Primakov is a Mozartian to the manner born, fit to stand as a role model to a new generation.”

 Vassily Primakov has released numerous recordings for Bridge Records that include works by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Chopin, Dvorak, Debussy, Tchaikovsky, Scriabin, Rachmaninoff, Philip Glass, Arlene Sierra and Poul Ruders.

The Program

 Brahms: Cello Sonata No. 1 in E minor, Op. 38              

 Martinu: Variations on a Slovak Theme                        

 Pärt: Fratres                

 Shostakovich: Sonata for Cello and Piano in D minor, Op. 40    

Contact: Norman Dunfee  

Press@legatoarts.com