Yoram Ish-Hurwitz, piano

 

Yoram Ish-Hurwitz is a Dutch pianist of Israeli origin. He began his studies with Danièle Dechenne and Jan Wijn at the Sweelinck Conservatorium in Amsterdam. In 1993 he was the first Dutch pianist to graduate from the Juilliard School in New York with the Hungarian pianist György Sándor. Finally he was admitted to the soloist class of the renowned piano teacher Karl-Heinz Kämmerling with whom he studied for another two years.

In 1988 he won the second prize at the Eduard Flipse Piano Competition in Rotterdam. Three years later he was awarded the Jacques Vonk Prize by a unanimous international jury. Since then he has frequently performed in The Netherlands, including many times in the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. He is also a regular guest as soloist with many orchestras and has given recitals in Norway, Germany, Slovakia, Italy, Czech Republic, Great Britain and the U.S. amongst other countries and has taken part in a large number of international festivals such as Bergen, Trondheim and Brighton. Since 2003 Yoram Ish-Hurwitz has been a Steinway Artist.

His discography includes works by Franz Schubert, Frédéric Chopin, Modest Mussorgsky, Sergei Prokofiev and the complete Années de Pèlerinage by Franz Liszt. One of the Liszt CDs reached the top ten in the Classical Music charts and kept the number one position for several weeks. In the beginning of 2009, the first of two CDs of the complete Iberia piano cycle came out. Its appearance came simultaneously with the Iberia project, organized to mark the 100th anniversary (in 2009) of the death, and the 150th of the birth (in 2010) of Isaac Albéniz. A couple of years before that, Ish-Hurwitz filled concert halls with his Liszt project Pilgrim Years which reaped great praise from the press and public.

In 2008 he was responsible for the musical part of the theatrical production The Pianist for actor and concert pianist, directed by Mette Bouhuijs. In it, Dutch actor Edwin de Vries tells the gripping tale of the Jewish pianist Szpilman during World War II. About fifty performances were given throughout the Netherlands, including at the prestigious Dutch Theatre Festival. The Pianist was nominated for the Dutch Theatre Audience Award.