Pianist Ilya Shmukler perform works by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Modest Mussorgsky, live from the Seventeenth Church of Christ, Scientist, Chicago.
“Shmukler is a volcano”; “the name of Ilya Shmukler should be remembered” – that is how the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung described this pianist after his triumph at the world-renowned Concours Géza Anda 2024 in Zurich, Switzerland, where he won four special awards in addition to the First Prize.
Besides the Concours Géza Anda, Ilya is a laureate of many international piano contests, taking top prizes at the Wideman (Shreveport), Lewisville Lake Symphony, Artist Presentation Society (St. Louis), Shigeru Kawai (Tokyo) Competitions. To have become a finalist of the 2022 Cliburn Competition, where he also received the award for the “Best Performance of a Mozart Concerto”, is a milestone in his career. As a winner of the Carnegie Weill Recital Hall Debut Audition he made his New York debut at the venerated venue on December 13, 2022.
An alumnus of the Tchaikovsky Moscow State Conservatory under the guidance of Professors Elena Kuznetsova and Sergey Kuznetsov, Ilya continues his studies at Park University (USA) with Professor Stanislav Ioudenitch, so he combines diverse approaches in piano playing. Ilya’s dear teacher Stanislav Ioudenitch characterized him as “an exceptionally talented pianist with a unique blend of imagination and individuality.”