Samson Tsoy

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  • Piano

About Samson

The 2024/25 season sees Samson perform in Bozar in Brussels, Saffron Hall, Festival Bach de Montreal, and at the Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam.

Recent highlights have included a debut with the London Philharmonic Orchestra (Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 3), asolo recital at Wigmore Hall, concerts with the Philharmonia Orchestra with Gergely Madaras (Scriabin’s Prometheus) and Maxim Emelyanychev (both Brahms Piano Concertos in one evening), and a concert with Münchener Kammerorchester and Enrico Onofri. He also collaborated with acclaimed American artist Richard Serra at the Gagosian Gallery, where he performed Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps.

Samson frequently collaborates with pianist Pavel Kolesnikov, and this season the duo make their recital debuts at Carnegie Hall, Berlin Konzerthaus, and Rotterdam’s De Doelen, alongside a return to Wigmore Hall. They will take part in a digital installation at Antwerp’s MoMu combining choreography by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Schubert’s Fantasie. Recent highlights for the duo include performances at Amsterdam’s Muziekgebouw and London’s Southbank and Barbican centres. In 2019, the duo co-founded the Ragged Music Festival where they perform alongside Alina Ibragimova, Elisabeth Leonskaja, Lawrence Power and Elena Stikhina.

Lauded for his originality and "inexhaustible imagination’" Samson has performed in venues and festivals around the world including the Barbican, Wigmore Hall, Royal Festival Hall and Queen Elizabeth Hall, Aldeburgh festival, Théâtre de la Ville and Salle Gaveau in Paris, Berlin’s Konzerthaus, and Verbier Festival. In 2023, he was the first-ever classical musician to perform for the opening of the Münchner Sicherheitskonferenz (Munich Security Conference) in front of the world’s most important political leaders.

Samson’s debut album featuring solo works by Brahms will be released by Linn records in early 2025. He was born in Kazakhstan and is based in London.

Samson is based in London

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Contact

For availability and general enquiries:

Kate Sweeney

Kate Sweeney

Artist Manager

For contracts, logistics and press:

Jemima Pickersgill

Jemima Pickersgill

Assistant Artist Manager

Representation

Worldwide general management with Askonas Holt

Follow Samson

Season Highlights

Aug 2024
Kilkenny Arts Festival
Works by Beethoven
Oct 2024
Wigmore Hall, London
Works by Bach and Shostakovich Duo Recital with Pavel Kolesnikov
Nov 2024
Bozar, Brussels
Works by Stravinsky, Schubert Duo recital with Pavel Kolesnikov
Nov 2024
Saffron Hall
Works by Stravinsky, Desyatnikov, Schubert Duo recital with Pavel Kolesnikov
Dec 2024
Festival Bach de Montreal
Works by Stravinsky, Desyatnikov, Schubert Duo recital with Pavel Kolesnikov
Jan 2025
Muziekgebouw, Amsterdam
Works by Bach/Kurtag Duo recital with Pavel Kolesnikov

Video

Photos

Sample Programmes

  • Sample Programme 1: Bach

    Bach Bach: Partitas Nos. 1-6

  • Sample Programme 2: “Playing is just playing”

    Complete Partitas by Bach & selection from Játékok by Kurtág in two evenings Kurtág: Játékok Bach: Partita No.2 Kurtág: Játékok Bach: Partita No.3 interval Kurtág: Játékok Bach: Partita No. 4 /// Kurtág: Játékok Bach: Partita No.1 Kurtág: Játékok Bach: Partita No.5 interval Kurtág: Játékok Bach: Partita No. 6 Kurtág’s musical language, his idea of playfulness and freedom within precision and intensity of meaning resonates beautifully with Bach’s limitless inventiveness within strict polyphonic principles. “Pleasure in playing, joy of movement” – these words of the author himself revealing the essence of Játékok apply miraculously to astonishing six keyboard Partitas that contain arguably Bach’s most daring takes on the traditional dance forms. It is the ultimate mastery and discipline of two great composers that, as if by some trick, draw a breathtaking range of emotions and colours from simple ideas. “Playing is just playing”, says Kurtag, and maybe this is where the true magic and purity comes from.

  • Sample Programme 3: Brahms

    Brahms: Chaconne from Partita No. 2 in D minor (JS Bach), arrangement for Piano, left hand Brahms: Vier Ernste Geränge Op. 121, arr. Reger Brahms: 6 Chorale Preludes, Op. 122, arr. Busoni Brahms: Variations and Fugue on a theme by Handel, Op. 24. This unorthodox combination explores some of the most important sources of Brahms’ inspiration – and simultaneously, some of the most striking and singular corners of his ouevre. His intense relationship with baroque music is evident in most of his work, but this project concentrates specifically on different aspects of Brahms’ own exploration (and internalisation) of baroque, and offers a listener a chance to delve into Brahms’ very personal and passionate interpretation of the aesthetics of the period.

  • Sample Programme 4: Late Beethoven and Scriabin

    Scriabin: Piano Sonata No. 4, Op. 30 Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 30, Op. 109 Scriabin: Piano Sonata No. 10, Op. 70 Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 31, Op. 110 interval Scriabin: Vers la flamme, Op. 72 Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 32, Op. 111

  • Sample Programme 5: Brahms and Schubert

    Brahms: Three Intermezzi Op. 117 Brahms: 4 Klavierstücke Op. 119 interval Schubert: Piano Sonata in B-flat major, D. 960

News

Press

  • Inmost Heart

    CD Review
    Feb 2025

    • ...Tsoy contemplates creativity across centuries in this fine recital... Elegantly constructed and intimate... heartfelt and subtle... Think of this as a probing meditation on creativity, or just enjoy listening.

    • "Au plus profond du cœur": this could be the translation of the title "Inmost Heart" given to his first solo album... A devilishly well conceived program by a pianist of rare delicacy and intelligence, whom I love enormously. The beauty of the sound recording by Philip Hobbs, the wizard of Linn Records, adds to the success of this record.

    • ***** And it is indeed a glorious compilation, benefiting hugely from Tsoy’s magic keyboard touch: the tenth Chorale Prelude, Herzlich tut mich verlangen, opens in a luxuriously warm glow. And the album’s centrepiece, the Handel Variations, held me spellbound, with the segues between its very short pieces gliding so smoothly past that the whole work feels like one continuous line of thought. Brisk, grave, pugnacious, seductive or tender, and with the softest ones sanctified with a delicate hint of rubato, each variation is a miniature masterpiece. While the Busoni arrangements are sustained with persuasive grace, the Ernste Gesänge inhabit a darker territory. The challenge of these works is aesthetic rather than technical – to make their contrapuntal voices sing – and Tsoy’s responses to that challenge are unfailingly beautiful.

    • For his first solo album, pianist Samson Tsoy has imagined a program full of covers and variations. A clever game of mirrors where Brahms, Bach, Reger and Busoni dialogue, to be discovered!

  • Scriabin Prometheus Poem of Fire

    Philharmonia Orchestra at Bold Tendencies
    Jun 2022

    • ***** If you want cosmic, it was cosmic. Samson Tsoy triumphed as the intrepid piano soloist.

    • **** Prometheus is in similar language, but more feral and dangerous, and it requires a piano soloist: the magnificent Samson Tsoy navigated its fiery challenges with great flair.

  • Brahms Piano Concerto Nos 1 & 2

    Philharmonia Orchestra at Bold Tendencies
    Aug 2021

    • ***** As in the Brahms Second Concerto, Tsoy’s very rare ability to bounce between light, deft humour and colossal Russian-school pianism paid off: there won’t be a better or classier Pictures live for a long time to come.

  • Messiaen Quartet for the End of Time

    Ragged School Museum
    Oct 2020

    • **** Tsoy sculpted the cosmic plainchant that is the second movement’s backdrop with warmth and care...

  • Beethoven Moonlight Sonata

    Bold Tendencies
    Aug 2020

    • ***** If Bartók in one way trumped the holy Frenchman’s metaphysical ambition, departing too soon, Tsoy...made us feel that Beethoven was moving in that direction, from the steady hypnosis of the “Moonlight” Sonata’s first movement, bold magic even under strip lighting and the red lights of endless construction projects in the distance, via a very human transitional movement to more massive resonance at the climactic end of the finale, a true clincher.

  • Chamber Music with Alina Ibragimova

    Fidelio Cafe, London
    Jul 2020

    • ***** Their performance of Janacek’s Violin Sonata comes bursting with bucolic vigour, Arvo Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel has immaculate poise, and Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata – preceded by a reading from the Heiligenstadt Testament – alternates between delicately inflected grace and hurtling force.

  • Brahms, Beethoven & Ravel

    Wigmore Hall
    Jun 2020

    • ***** Then, with Tsoy back at the upper end of the keyboard, there was the F minor Fantasie, its long, obsessive episodes masterfully paced so that it tightened and unwound like a spring.