Musical Tribute to David Hockney - 12 April 2025
© kseniaparisphoto, Joss McKinley
- Date
- 12 April 2025 – 8:30pm
- Place
- Auditorium
David Hockney, one of the most influential British artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, is also a passionate and discerning music lover.
This concert will be broadcast live and in replay on FLV Play, and offline on Radio Classique.
To pay tribute to the great master, pianists Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy embark on a two concert journey, inspired by David Hockney’s life and work. Springtime is an infinite source of lifelong fascination and inspiration for Mr Hockney who made many hundreds of drawings, sketches and paintings of nature’s awakening. In 1981, Mr Hockney designed the set for the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring in New York. In this concert, set against lighthearted melodies of Strauss’ delicious Frühlingsstimmen, Stravinsky’s groundbreaking masterwork will be performed in the author’s original four hands piano version, emphasising its astonishing graphic vigour. The pianist duo has played this vibrant and primal score in Hockney’s studio, at his request, demonstrating the intimate ties between music and the painter’s work.
Also for this concert, the great Russian soprano Elena Stikhina will lend her voice to celebrate the music of Richard Wagner, a composer that Mr Hockney highly appreciates, with an anthology of excerpts from Wesendonck Lieder and Tristan und Isolde. The audience will also have the chance to see the film Wagner Drive, a rare but nevertheless iconic work directed by David Hockney, in which Wagner’s music is dovetailed with the landscapes along Californian roads at dusk.
- Johann Strauss
Frühlingsstimmen, arrangement for two pianos - Igor Stravinsky
The Rite of Spring, for piano four hands - John Adams
Short Ride in a Fast Machine, arrangement for two pianos - Richard Wagner
- Der Fliegende Holländer, overture
Transcription for two pianos by Claude Debussy
- Wesendonck Lieder (excerpts), for soprano and piano
- Tristan und Isolde, Isoldes Liebestod, Transcription for soprano and two pianos by Franz Liszt/Pavel Kolesnikov
- Der Ring des Nibelungen (excerpts), Transcription for two pianos by Max Reger/Pavel Kolesnikov
Elena Stikhina
Elena Stikhina graduated from the Moscow State Conservatory in 2012 and quickly came to European attention when she won first prize at the Competizione dell’Opera Linz in 2014, and again in 2016 when she won the Audience and Culturarte Prizes at the Operalia Placido Domingo competition. After her New York Metropolitan Opera debut (singing the title role in Suor Angelica), she was invited to perform on the world’s greatest operatic stages (Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, Semperoper Dresden, Baden-Baden Festival) and in major concert halls (Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Munich Philharmonic).
She has performed the lead role in Tosca as well as Leonora (Il Trovatore) in Berlin and Dresden, Senta (Der fliegende Holländer) in Baden-Baden and Munich, Brunnhilde (Siegfried) and Gutrune (Göterdämmerung) at the Philharmonie de Paris, the title roles in Médée at the Salzburg Festival, Aida at the Grand Théâtre in Geneva and the Dutch National Opera, and Salome at La Scala in Milan.
She became a guest soloist at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg after forging a repertoire on the Vladivostock Mariinsky Theatre’s New Primorsky Stage, where she has performed the title role in Aida, and the roles of Cio-Cio-San (Madama Butterfly), Donna Elvira (Don Giovanni), Rosalinde (Die Fledermaus), Renata (The Fiery Angel), Antonia (The Tales of Hoffmann), Elisabeth (Tannhäuser) and Mimi (La Bohème).
Last season, she performed the title roles of Leonora (Il Trovatore) in Athens, Mimi and Leonora (La Forza del Destino) at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, as well as the title roles of Salome and Tosca at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg and Aida at the Arena di Verona.
During the 2024-2025 season, she performs the title roles of Tosca at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Aida at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, as well as Manon Lescaut and Salome at the Opernhaus Zurich.
Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy
Pavel Kolesnikov was born in Siberia, into a family of scientists. Samson Tsoy was born in Kazakhstan. Both studied at the Moscow Conservatory, where they met, and later at the Royal College of Music in London. There, they notably received instruction from Sergei Dorensky, Norma Fisher and Maria Joao Pires, among other piano masters.
They are among the most captivating and original musicians of their generation, celebrated for their visionary ways of bridging tradition and modernity. As soloists and as a duo, they present their thought-provoking programmes in the world’s most respected concert halls—Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, and Suntory Hall—while also creating powerful musical dialogues in unconventional spaces such as the Gagosian Galleries, the Guggenheim Museums in Bilbao and Venice, Antwerp’s MoMu and London’s Bold Tendencies. Their duo debut at Carnegie Hall was named one of The New York Times’ "Best of 2024." That same year, their debut recording of works by Schubert and Desyatnikov on Harmonia Mundi was featured in Le Monde’s "Nos albums préférés de 2024" and won the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik and the Diapason d’Or, while also being named BBC Music Magazine’s Instrumental Choice.
As soloists, both artists have earned international recognition. Pavel Kolesnikov, known for his poetic and deeply immersive artistry, has recorded extensively for Hyperion and received the Diapason d’Or de l’année for his Chopin Mazurkas. In recent seasons, he has been artist-in-residence at The Armory in New York and at the Wigmore Hall, and a featured artist at the Aldeburgh Festival. He has performed with the London Symphony Orchestra, Danish National Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, and Philharmonia Orchestra—collaborating with conductors Susanna Mälkki, Manfred Honeck, Sir Mark Elder, Gianandrea Noseda, Alexandre Bloch, and Vasily Petrenko.
Samson Tsoy, praised for his inexhaustible imagination and exceptional sensitivity, released his debut solo recording, Inmost Heart, in February 2025, earning a five-star review from BBC Music Magazine. He recently made his debuts with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Münchener Kammerorcheter, and performed both Brahms’ piano concerti in one evening with the Philharmonia Orchestra. He has worked with conductors Maxim Emelyanychev, Gergely Madaras, Enrico Onofri, Valery Gergiev, and Diego Masson, and in 2023, became the first classical musician to perform at the opening of the Munich Security Conference.
Kolesnikov and Tsoy often extend their performance work outside of conventional practice. As musical curators, they are known for their site-specific projects realised both at iconic spaces and unique off-the-beaten-track locations. Avid multidisciplinary collaborators, they closely worked with a choreographer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, a sculptor Richard Serra, and a fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto in recent years. In 2019, Kolesnikov and Tsoy co-founded the Ragged Music Festival—an initiative that reimagines the relationship between music, architecture, and the visual arts. The festival was nominated for a South Bank Sky Arts Award in 2021. In 2023, Muziekgebouw Amsterdam offered Pavel and Samson carte blanche to create an international edition, subsequently re-inviting the festival in March 2026.
