Duo Kolesnikov Tsoy

Kolesnikov & Tsoy

Ensemble

Duo Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy is manged in the BeNeLux, by Leontien van der Vliet.

Contact:
E: leontien.vandervliet@interartists.nl
T: +31 6 5 24 68 707

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The 2024/25 season saw pianists Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy debut as a duo at Bozar in Brussels, Saffron Hall, Festival Bach de Montreal, and return 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 has released their next studio album in June 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 editions at the Muziekgebouw Amsterdam in 2023 and 2026. 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.

Pavel is especially known for his cross-genre collaborations, including “Celestial Navigation” – a baroque to contemporary programme featuring projections by architect Sophie Hicks and text by Martin Crimp – and his realisation of Bach’s Goldberg Variations with dancer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker. Summer 2023 he had a seven-concert residency at the Aldeburgh Festival and often returns to the Klavier Festival Ruhr and to Wigmore Hall where he was artist-in-residence during 2020/21.

Recent highlights for Samson Tsoy have included concertos with the Philharmonia Orchestra (with Maxim Emelyanychev and Gergely Madaras), London Philharmonic, a Messiaen project at the Gagosian Gallery in collaboration with sculptor Richard Serra, a performance at the Münchner Sicherheitskonferenz in front of the world's most important political leaders, and recitals at Konzerthaus Berlin and Wigmore Hall.

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Carnegie Hall c Stefan Cohen

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Reviews on the new Harmonia Mundi release: Stravinsky Sacre /Ravel Ma Mère l’Oye

“Kolesnikov and Tsoy generate almost as many decibels on
their single piano (hear their evocation of the timpani and bass
drum in the ‘Sacrificial Dance’). It is as though they have sought
to recreate the legendary Stravinsky-Debussy performance, of
which the Frenchman said: ‘It haunts me like a beautiful
nightmare and I try in vain to recapture the terrifying impression
it made on me.’ Sought and succeeded.
At the other extreme in so many ways, Ravel’s Mother Goose
Suite is here another minor miracle of pianistic reimagining (in
this case the duet was actually the ballet’s original form), with its
seemingly infinite, ravishing shades of pianissimo. The album is
graced by two elegant essays: the one Gallic-fanciful and
credited to the pianists, the other solidly musicological. However
many or few piano duet albums you want on your virtual or
actual shelves, I’d struggle to recommend any above this one.”

— Gramophone

“This week’s best releases:

The pianists Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy create music that casts a spell.

Such are the duo’s exertions that it’s easy to imagine the piano technician, Vitaly Shumkin, standing alongside during the recording, ready to pounce, with further help from a soothing face towel and a bowl of warm water for the pianists’ hands.

The listener too may feel in need of aid. It arrives with the 15 or so poised and pellucid minutes of Ravel’s Mother Goose suite in its original four-handed piano version: music that casts its spell not by drowning us with notes but by offering almost too few. ”

— Times *****

Season Highlights

12 April 2025 contribute to David Hockney at Fondation Louis Vuitton, replay on FLV Play, and on Radio Classique.

June 2025 release 2nd album Harmonia Mundi

20 & 22 June ‘Schubertiade’ Ragged Music Festival London

5 August 2025 Edinburg Festival

29 September 2025 Piano Festival aux Jacobins Toulouse

8 & 9 January 2026 Poulenc Double Concerto with Orchestre Philharmonique de Liège & Lionel Bringuier

21 & 22 March 2026 2nd Ragged Music Festival Amsterdam