Joseph Kalichstein

Acclaimed for the heartfelt intensity and technical mastery of his playing, pianist Steinway Artist Joseph Kalichstein (1946 - 2022) enthralled audiences all over the globe, winning equal praise as orchestral soloist, recitalist and chamber musician.

As an Australian critic exclaimed: “To hear Kalichstein play is to fall in love with music all over again!”

With his diverse repertoire of works ranging from Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms to works by Bartok, Prokofiev and others, Mr. Kalichstein collaborated with such celebrated conductors as Daniel Barenboim, Pierre Boulez, James Conlon, Christoph von Dohnányi, Charles Dutoit, Lawrence Foster, Zubin Mehta, Andre Previn, Leonard Slatkin, Edo de Waart, David Zinman and the late George Szell and Erich Leinsdorf. He performed with the world’s greatest orchestras, from the Boston and Chicago Symphony Orchestras to the Berlin Philharmonic and the London Symphony, from the NHK and New York Philharmonic to the Cleveland Orchestra. Mr. Kalichstein was also a frequent guest pianist with the world’s most beloved string quartets, including the Guarneri and Emerson Quartets, with whom he played the Shostakovich Piano Quintet in their Shostakovich Cycles in London and Washington.

A favorite of New York concertgoers, Mr. Kalichstein appeared in several recitals on Carnegie Hall’s “Keyboard Virtuosi” series. His latest CD releases include music of Schumann and Brahms (on Koch International) and of Brahms, Mendelssohn and Schubert (“The Romantic Piano”, on Audiofon). He served as the Chamber Music Advisor to the Kennedy Center and is the Artistic Director of the Center’s Fortas Chamber Music Concerts. He held the inaugural Chamber Music Chair at the Juilliard School, where he also taught a limited number of advanced piano students.

Born in Tel Aviv, he came to the United States in 1962. His principal teachers included Joshua Shor in Israel and Edward Steuermann and Ilona Kabos at The Juilliard School. Prior to winning the 1969 Leventritt Award, he had won the Young Concert Artists Auditions, and as a result he gave a heralded New York recital debut, followed by an invitation from Leonard Bernstein to perform Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 with the New York Philharmonic in a nationally televised concert on CBS.

Joseph Kalichstein was a founding member of the famed Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio. The Trio played in major music capitals as well as on all the great university concert series. Its most recent recording project is a CD devoted to works that the eminent American composer Ellen Zwilich had written for the Trio, just released on the Azica label. Bridge records recently released their critically acclaimed 2-CD Schubert Cycle.