Pavel Kolesnikov & Samson Tsoy

/
  • Piano
  • Duos

About Pavel Kolesnikov & Samson Tsoy

The 2024/25 seasons sees pianists Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy debut as a duo at Bozar in Brussels, Saffron Hall, Festival Bach de Montreal, and returns to the Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam and Wigmore Hall. These dates follow appearances last season at Carnegie Hall, Berlin's Konzerthaus, Rotterdam's De Doelen, and the Muziekcentrum de Bijloke in Ghent.

In 2024 they released their debut album as a duo on Harmonia Mundi, which included works by Schubert and Desyatnikov. The album received rave reviews in The Guardian, Gramophone Magazine, Le Monde, and was described as "magical" by BBC Music Magazine. It also was awarded the prestigious 'Diapason D'Or'. The duo will release their next studio album in 2025.

For both artists, space and setting is a crucial element in their music-making. During the pandemic they performed Messiaen’s Visions de l’Amen at a former multistorey car park in London (Bold Tendencies), while in 2023 they brought back concerts at Aldeburgh’s historic Jubilee Theatre where they placed the audience on stage while performing Bach and Kurtág on upright pianos placed in the stalls. Other presentations include Prokofiev’s Cinderella in the Muziekgebouw loading bay and performances in galleries across Europe.

Described as “piano magicians” by The Arts Desk, Pavel and Samson have been living and working together ever since their early student days. In 2019, the duo co-founded the Ragged Music Festival, which provides a stripped-down environment for artists to explore a dialogue between music, architecture, and visual arts. Originally based in London’s Ragged School Museum, the festival has expanded internationally with the first edition at the Muziekgebouw Amsterdam in 2023. Over the last four years it has welcomed visual artists Hélène Binet, Antoni Malinowski, Eva Vermandel and musicians Alina Ibragimova, Elisabeth Leonskaja, Mark Padmore, Lawrence Power, Elena Stikhina and Doric String Quartet. The Festival was nominated for a South Bank Sky Arts Awards in 2021.

Download programme biography   

Contact

For Sales & Enquiries

Kate Sweeney

Kate Sweeney

Artist Manager

For Contracts & Logistics

Jemima Pickersgill

Jemima Pickersgill

Assistant Artist Manager

Representation

Worldwide general management with Askonas Holt

Season Highlights

Aug 2024
Kilkenny Arts Festival
Stravinsky Rite of Spring
Oct 2024
Wigmore Hall
Works by Bach and Shostakovich
Nov 2024
Bozar, Brussels
Works by Schubert and Stravinsky
Nov 2024
Recital, Saffron Hall
Works by Stravinsky and Schubert
Dec 2024
Festival Bach de Montreal
Works by Bach and Shostakovich
Jan 2025
Muziekgebouow, Amsterdam
Works by Bach/Kurtag

Video

Photos

Sample Programmes

  • Sample Programme 1 (two pianos)

    Bach: Prelude and Fugue in C Major WTC 1; Shostakovich: Prelude and Fugue in D Major; Bach: Prelude and Fugue in D Minor WTC 2; Shostakovich: Prelude in A Major Bach: Fugue in A Major WTC 2; Bach: Prelude in A Major WTC 2 and Shostakovich: Fugue in A Major; Shostakovich: Prelude and Fugue in D Minor; Bach: Prelude and Fugue in G Minor WTC 1; Shostakovich: Prelude and Fugue in C Major; Interval Shostakovich: Prelude and Fugue in B Minor; Bach: Prelude in A Minor WTC 1 and Shostakovich: Fugue in A Minor; Bach: Prelude and Fugue in E Flat Minor WTC 1; Shostakovich: Prelude and Fugue in E Flat Minor; Bach: Prelude in F Sharp Major WTC 2 and Shostakovich: Fugue in F Sharp Major; Bach: Prelude and Fugue in G Minor WTC 2. 1 hour (no interval) version also available

  • Sample Programme 2

    Poulenc: Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra in D minor Bruch: Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra, Op. 88a Mozart: Concerto for Three Pianos, K. 242 and Concerto for Two Pianos, K. 365 Mendelssohn: Both Double Concertos for Two Pianos and Orchestra in A-flat major and E major Britten: Scottish Ballad for Two Pianos and Orchestra Bartók: Concerto for Two Pianos, Percussion, and Orchestra Bach: Concerto for Two Harpsichords (or Pianos) in C minor, BWV 1060, and Concerto for Two Harpsichords (or Pianos) in C major, BWV 1061 Vaughan Williams: Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra Martinů: Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra

  • Sample Programme 3

    Schubert: Wanderer theme Interval Rachmaninov: Symphonic dances

  • Sample Programme 4

    Stravinsky: Rite of Spring Interval Desyatnikov: Trompe d l'oeil (or Schubert Divertissement) Schubert: Fantasie in F minor

  • Sample Programme 5 (two pianos)

    Bach: Chorals (arrangements by Kurtag for two pianos and one piano four hands, plus arrangements by Busoni for solo piano) Interval Messiaen: Visions de l’Amen

News

Press

  • Bach & Shostakovich Preludes and Fugues

    Bach Festival, Montreal
    Dec 2024

    • It was one of those moments that one would like to capture and encapsulate. To replay it ad libitum, so unreal did it seem, with its intelligence, relevance, vision and topicality... The programme ‘Two pianos for Bach and Shostakovich’ has been concocted by Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy not as an opportunistic juxtaposition... but to show us just how relative time can be. To what extent, then, Bach could be relevant today and speak to us about the meaning of life...

  • Stravinsky, Desyatnikov & Schubert

    Carnegie Hall
    Feb 2024

    • Four hands piano playing is intimate enough; for Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy, partners in life as well as music, it’s downright erotic. Few concerts this year captured the alchemy of chamber music as intensely as their performance at Weill Recital Hall, which opened, or rather erupted, with Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring.” As their arms and hands overlapped, at extremes of sound, expression and physicality, they constructed an interpretation of ferocious sensuality that was also disciplined, clear and seemingly from one shared mind.

  • Franz Schubert & Leonid Desyatnikov

    Debut Album
    Jun 2024

    • **** Acute listening and sonic experiments with the Schubert masterpieces add immediacy, setting this recording apart... These two listen closely, play with rare intimacy and draw us in, demanding we pay the same acute attention.

    • **** ...loving attention paid to touch, articulation, dynamics and resonance as these assiduous and mesmerising musicians traverse the deceptive simplicities of the Divertissement à la Hongroise and the grander fare of the F minor Fantasia...

    • ...It should be said upfront that Kolesnikov and Tsoy share a unity of musical intent, perfectly matched finesse and nuance, and beautifully coordinated pianistic resources that make their hand-in-glove ensemble a joy to experience. Desyatnikov’s piece is richly detailed and sharply focused. Its Schubertian inspirations are always obvious, without ever being overstated or laboured. Kolesnikov and Tsoy’s approach to the piece is so immersive, as well as deeply artistic...

    • Magical Schubert from an adventurous piano duo... in this recording the Schubert works emerge as absolutely magical. The Divertissement elicits a sumptuous softness, while the Fantasie creates the impression of vast and intensely dramatic landscapes. Performance ***** Recording ****

      • Michael Church, BBC Music Magazine
      • 03 August 2025

    • Their debut CD is brilliant... The duo’s performance of Schubert’s Fantasy is stunning; this is a recording that is as good as or better than many made by far more famous pianists.

  • Poulenc Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra

    Classical Pride, with the CBSO
    Jul 2023

    • It [Poulenc] was brilliantly delivered by Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy, elegantly swapping phrases in the slow movement and dispatching the jazzy finale with poker-faced precision. Their encore, Ravel’s piano duet Le jardin féerique ...was exquisite.

  • Prokofiev & Rachmaninov

    Queen Elizabeth Hall
    May 2023

    • ***** ...there were moments of rare magic as each pianist conducted himself with one hand and played a single line with the other... the two pianists created hypnotic magic of their own... making this one for the ages... It will resonate for weeks and months to come.

  • Schubert & Brahms

    Music at Paxton
    Aug 2022

    • The duo’s playing of this last dramatic section is breathtaking! We can hear the fugal entries, from both players, but somehow – without, as it were, showing the joins, there are all sorts of accompanying melodic and harmonic effects – how can just four hands make this splendid noise? I found it an absorbing performance.

  • Beethoven, Kurtag, Poulenc & Stravinsky

    East Neuk Festival
    Jul 2022

  • Saint Saens Circle

    LSO St Luke's
    Mar 2022

    • ***** Light, air and adventure from two pianos... The partners are very different personalities, and you hear that in their solo recitals; but here the consonance was so absolute that, able as many of us were to see hands at one keyboard, the melody line seemed to be coming from there but the optics told us otherwise.

  • Bartok Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion

    Bold Tendencies, London
    Jun 2021

    • ***** ... they succeeded brilliantly. The velvety musings of the two pianos in the second movement, in dialogue with the mysterious swishes, taps and rolls of cymbal and snare drum, were especially effective.

  • Messiaen Visions de l'Amen

    Bold Tendencies, London
    Aug 2020

    • ***** ... the phrase “chamber music” is hardly adequate to describe this magnificent performance of Olivier Messiaen’s two-piano masterpiece, Visions de l’Amen. As Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy powered virtuosically through the clangorous climaxes of Messiaen’s seven-movement work, it sometimes sounded as though every bell in Paris was pealing, every organ thundering a toccata, every choir united in some ancient plainsong hymn. All at the same time.

  • Brahms, Schubert, Beethoven & Debussy

    Wigmore Hall
    Jun 2020

    • ***** Piano duo bring electrifying intimacy... two pianists whose sweetness of touch and unobtrusive sense of momentum illuminated a thoughtful programme... qualities present in everything these two played.

Discography