Alexandre Kantorow — from damp Olympic hero to Proms piano star

Times

5 days ago

A solitary pianist sits at a Steinway piano on a bridge in Paris, ready to play to a global audience of millions watching the Olympics opening ceremony. It's pouring with rain but even a deluge can't stop Ravel's Jeux d'eau (Fountains, aptly) rippling from Alexandre Kantorow's fingers.
'No one else was allowed on the bridge, not even security. I had to wait 20 minutes in the rain without playing, just looking at all the boats passing,' he says, recalling last summer. 'I felt so alone in Paris, which was absolutely magical.'
As we talk over a post-concert beer in Freiburg, Germany, I'm swept up by this rose-tinted version of events, but I can't help wondering, more prosaically, what happened to the piano. 'My contract is terrible — I still can't talk about the piano and how they made it,' he says. 'But let's say they prepared for the rain, so there was no destruction of a piano.'
The 28-year-old French pianist reached a new level of fame after his rain-drenched Ravel, but he was already hot property in the piano world. Dubbed 'Liszt reincarnated' for his impassioned performances, in 2019 Kantorow became the first French musician to win the Tchaikovsky Competition — a musical equivalent of the Olympics. He remembers it both as 'one of the highlights of stress' in his life and as a place where he reached a musical paradise. 'It's a memory of what's it like to only have music in your mind,' he explains — a rarefied state he's dedicated his life to achieving. His supercharged touring career began the moment he won. 'You've got no time,' he says. 'I didn't even go home, and they had already booked concerts.'
When I first heard Kantorow play live at a sold-out solo recital in London a few years ago, I was bowled over by his virtuosity and the resonant sound he conjures from the piano. (He attributes this to the Russian-French teacher Rena Shereshevskaya, who taught him the tricks of 'the long sound'.) His star has continued to rise and he recently won the $300,000 Gilmore Artist Award (he's using the money to build a studio in Paris). After an impressive Proms debut in 2023 playing Beethoven, Kantorow returns to the Royal Albert Hall this summer with Saint-Saëns' Fifth Piano Concerto, an entertaining piece nicknamed 'The Egyptian' (the composer was in the country when he composed it).
'It's one of the important French concertos that's not by Ravel. It's full of intensity and joy, and it makes for one of the most pleasing pieces of music, honestly, that we get on the piano,' Kantorow says, laughing as he splutters over a wasabi snack. 'Even in France, there was for a long time a sort of contempt for Saint-Saëns because he can go over the edge into 'easy' or over-sugary music. But he was incredibly creative, and there's always a spirit of discovery [in his music].'
In an age when even purist classical pianists such as Vikingur Olafsson dabble with soothing albums of 'reworks', tapping into the popularity of 'relaxing' and 'chillout' piano playlists, Kantorow has rooted himself firmly in the Romantic era. His playing delivers big emotions and dramatic contrasts. ('I get very hot-headed,' he says. 'I wish I could have more distance.') He's been immersed in Brahms, Liszt and Saint-Saëns, is filling in repertoire gaps by learning Rachmaninov's Second and Prokofiev's Third concertos, and has a new love: the music of Nikolai Medtner, whom he calls 'the Chopin of the 20th century'. What does Kantorow think the appeal of this music is today? 'Melodies — I think that's very important for people. Melody is a big part of the 19th century,' he says without hesitation. 'And the best Romantic music carries a feeling of a universal journey that everyone will understand.'
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That's certainly true of the darkness-to-light trajectory of Brahms's First Piano Concerto, which I've just heard Kantorow play in a free concert packed with schoolchildren and students. He's given a standing ovation and a single red rose, and when I meet him at the stage door afterwards, the fans are waiting. 'Wunderbar,' exclaims one starstruck woman, while a group of teenage girls gather round for a photo. 'Brahms is not going to work on every kid,' he replies, when I suggest that this serious, hour-long concerto is, much as I love it, an unexpected choice to introduce classical music to a new generation. 'Still,' he adds, 'it's a joy that a guy from the 19th century who wasn't the kind of person you'd probably have a good dinner with, had such an interior world that even today we cling to him.'
My impression is that the past is as alive to Kantorow as the present. When he went to Moscow for the Tchaikovsky Competition, he says his head was filled with the ghosts of Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky. His fantasy dinner guests would be Liszt, George Sand and Berlioz. He's less interested in staying in touch with the modern world. Not only does Kantorow avoid all social media but he is also 'extremely bad' at answering phone calls and texts. He has sacrificed time with people, he says, for this life of music, and shies away from a question about whether he is in a relationship.
'I'm afraid that you can very quickly become a sort of grown-up child,' he confesses. 'I'm very lucky to do these concerts, but you are not very autonomous. There are always people to bring you to places, who know where you're going. Musical life is advancing and the rest is not. I'm really struggling with that and trying to be sure that's not the case.'
Kantorow grew up in a family of musicians. His mother, Kathryn Dean, is a British violinist. 'I love Marmite.' Kantorow smiles. 'Christmas cake is a big tradition in the family, scrambled eggs in the morning. There's a big part of me that feels connected to Britain.' His French father, the violinist and conductor Jean-Jacques Kantorow, opened doors for him into the professional musical world. While Alexandre was still a teenager, they recorded two albums together for BIS, the small Swedish label that's since become part of Apple's Platoon and for which Kantorow still records. 'It was a privilege. He gave me a big chance, but he waited to be sure it wouldn't backfire — you need enough weight on your own to exist outside of your name,' Kantorow says.
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He also made the most of his big competition break. The Russian conductor Valery Gergiev, who was chair of the jury, whisked Kantorow and the other finalists off into a whirlwind of concerts. 'He wanted new repertoire and quickly, with no time to rehearse because he would arrive late, having already done an opera,' Kantorow says. 'This process of being immediately on the spot and having to react was the best school.'
Since then, Gergiev has become persona non grata in the West, barred for his close ties to Putin and refusal to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine. He is making his controversial return to Europe, conducting in Italy in a concert mooted for the end of July. 'I heard also Spain, maybe he was trying to …' Kantorow adds, trailing off. Should he be allowed back? 'My truthful wish I have in my heart is I wish to play again with him because he's one of the great artists of today,' he says. 'But I get it, honestly, I get it. From the point of view of Ukraine, I get it.'
While he believes artists can't hide and say they're apolitical ('everything you say or stand for has meaning'), he doesn't feel he yet has a full enough knowledge of politics to use his platform in the way that, say, the pianist Igor Levit has done. Nor does he feel under pressure to modernise the concert format. 'Honestly, the more I look at it, the more I feel that's also the joy of classical music. It's a place you go to if you're a bit overwhelmed or tired from the modern world,' he says. 'I think more and more it will be a sort of refuge for people.' Once again, the world disappears, and Kantorow is absorbed by music.Alexandre Kantorow plays at the Royal Albert Hall, London, on Jul 25, live on Radio 3/BBC Sounds, bbc.co.uk/proms. His album of Brahms and Schubert is out on BIS