Daria Rabotkina
A native of Kazan, Russia, and the daughter of two pianists, Daria Rabotkina is lauded as “…a pianist full of fire and warmth” (The Plain-Dealer). Dr. Rabotkina holds degrees from Mannes College of Music and Eastman School of Music. Winner of the 2007 Concert Artists Guild International Competition, Rabotkina has received top prizes at international competitions and participated in Finland’s Kuhmo Festival, Copenhagen’s Summer Festival and Germany’s MusikFest in Kreuth. In the United States, Rabotkina has appeared at the Rockport Chamber Music Festival, International Keyboard Institute and Festival, Music Academy of the West, PianoSummer at New Paltz and San Francisco International Piano Festival.
Rabotkina holds the position of an Associate Professor of Piano at Texas State University where she is also the Associate Director of the Texas State International Piano Festival and a founder of the FunKey Piano Project for local children. Dr. Rabotkina’s performing career includes collaborations with the San Francisco Symphony, New World Symphony and Kirov Orchestra, and recitals at the Ravinia’s Rising Stars series, Kennedy Center, Weill Recital Hall, among others. Her latest CD with humoresques by Dvořák, Reger, Rachmaninov, and Schumann was released to positive critical acclaim.
Alexander Korsantia
Dubbed “a major artist” by the Miami Herald and a “quiet maverick” by the Daily Telegraph, pianist Alexander Korsantia has been praised for the “clarity of his technique, richly varied tone and dynamic phrasing” (Baltimore Sun), and a “piano technique where difficulties simply do not exist” (Calgary Sun). The Boston Globe found his interpretation of his signature piece, Pictures at an Exhibition, to be “a performance that could annihilate all others one has heard.” And the Birmingham Post wrote: “his intensely responsive reading was shot through with a vein of constant fantasy, whether musing or mercurial.” Ever since winning Gold Medal at the Artur Rubinstein Piano Master Competition and the First Prize at the Sidney International Piano Competition, Korsantia’s career has taken him to many of the world’s major concert halls, collaborating with renowned artists such as Vadim Repin, Christoph Eschenbach, Gianandrea Noseda, Valery Gergiev, Paavo Järvi, Dan Ettinger and Carlos Prieto among others with such orchestras as the Chicago Symphony, Kirov Orchestra, RAI Orchestra in Turin, The City of Birmingham Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, Israel Philharmonic and the Far Cry. He often appears at Boston’s Jordan Hall with his colleagues Miriam Fried, Kim Kashkashian, Paul Biss and Laurence Lesser in chamber music concerts. Mr. Korsantia has been on the jury panel of many international piano competitions included the Arthur Rubinstein Piano Master Competition and Cleveland International Piano Competition.
In the current and coming seasons Mr. Korsantia performs Prokofiev’s Third Concerto with Boston Philharmonic, Akron Symphony and Xiamen Philharmonic, Rachmaninoff’s Third with Israel Symphony, Prokofiev’s Second with Stuttgart Philharmoniker and Telavi Festival in Georgia, Beethoven’s Fourth with Israel Philharmonic and Haifa Symphony, Chopin Second with Jerusalem Symphony, Israel Chamber Orchestra and Ingolstadt Chamber Orchestra. With The Far Cry chamber group he performed Galina Ustvolskaya’s Piano Concerto in Boston and Tbilisi, Georgia. In addition, he plays recitals at the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, National Concert Hall in Taipei, the Walnut Hill School, New Orleans, Salt Lake City, Greenfield Village (Michigan), Blaibach, Germany, Lodz (Poland), Jordan Hall in Boston, Cincinnati Conservatory, Shanghai Concert Hall, Gulangyu Concert Hall as well as extensive recital tours in Israel and Georgia. He will perform Shostakovich’s First Concerto with New Orleans Philharmonic as well as Rachmaninoff’s Second with Edmonton Symphony. He will record the latter with Stuttgart Philharmonic Dan Ettinger conducting.
Bel Air Music and Piano Classics are among the recording labels Mr. Korsantia has worked with. The most recent release is a collection of Beethoven (Eroica Variations), Rachmaninoff (Chopin Variations), and Copland (Piano Variations). His solo piano transcription of Ravel’s La valse has been published by Sikorski Musikverlage in 2018.
Alexander Korsantia was born in Tbilisi, Georgia. He later moved with his family to the United States. In 1999, he was awarded one of the most prestigious national awards, the Order of Honor, bestowed on him by then-President Eduard Shevardnadze. He is a recipient of the Golden Wing award (2015) and Georgia’s National State Prize (1997). Korsantia resides in Boston where he is a Professor of Piano on the faculty of the New England Conservatory. Mr. Korsantia is the artistic director of Tbilisi International Piano Competition and artistic adviser of the annual music festival “From Easter to Ascension” in Georgia.
