BIOGRAPHY

A leading duo of the new generation, pianists Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy stand out as two of the most captivating and original musicians of their generation. Celebrated for their visionary approach blending tradition and modernity, they are reshaping the art of the piano duo with a musical language marked by depth, boldness, and a singular artistic voice.

The 2026/27 seasons sees pianists Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy debut as a duo at Leipzig Gewandhaus, a tour of the US including cities Atlanta, NYC, Boston, and Montreal, debut with Romanian Radio Orchestra, and returns to Wigmore Hall Bozar, and Schloss Elmau. These dates follow recent appearances at Edinburgh International Festival, Piano aux Jacobins, Portland Piano International, Piano a Lyon, Klavier Festisval Ruhre, and returns to the De Doelen in Rotterdam, Carnegie Hall, Berlin’s Konzerthaus, Bozar Brussels, and the Muziekcentrum de Bijloke in Ghent.

Both of their recent albums released on Harmonia Mundi, received rave reviews in The Guardian, Gramophone Magazine, Le Monde, BBC Music Magazine. Their 2024 Schubert album was awarded the prestigious ‘Diapason D’Or’. They will release their third album in 2026.

For both artists, space and setting is a crucial element in their music-making. In September 2025 they brought their site‑specific musical vision to Ballroom Marfa for a weekend of performances. 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 the first edition at the Muziekgebouw Amsterdam in 2023. 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. They will bring the festival back to the Muziekgebouw in March 2026.

PRESS QUOTES

““Four hands piano playing is intimate enough; for Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy, partners in life as well as music, it’s downright erotic. Few concerts this year captured the alchemy of chamber music as intensely as their performance at Weill Recital Hall, which opened, or rather erupted, with Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring.” As their arms and hands overlapped, at extremes of sound, expression and physicality, they constructed an interpretation of ferocious sensuality that was also disciplined, clear and seemingly from one shared mind.”
Zachary Woolfe and Joshua Barone, The New York Times

“ It was one of those moments that one would like to capture and encapsulate. To replay it ad libitum, so unreal did it seem, with its intelligence, relevance, vision and topicality… The programme ‘Two pianos for Bach and Shostakovich’ has been concocted by Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy not as an opportunistic juxtaposition… but to show us just how relative time can be. To what extent, then, Bach could be relevant today and speak to us about the meaning of life…”
Christophe Huss, Le Devoir