Konstantin Lifschitz has earned a reputation for performing demanding masterpieces with great honesty and exceptional beauty. He appears in the world’s most important concert halls and with outstanding orchestras in recitals and concert programs. In addition, he has recorded numerous CDs. His performances have been praised as “magical moments” and “deeply satisfying” (The Independent) as well as “profoundly natural in expression” (The New York Times).

Konstantin Lifschitz was born in 1976 in Kharkiv, Ukraine. At the age of five, he began piano lessons at the Gnessin School of Music in Moscow. Tatiana Zelikman was his most important teacher. After graduating, he continued his studies in the United Kingdom and in Italy. His most influential teachers were Alfred Brendel, Leon Fleisher, Theodor Gutmann, Hamish Milne, Charles Rosen, Karl Ulrich Schnabel, Vladimir Tropp, Fou T’song, and Rosalyn Tureck, mainly at the Lieven International Piano Foundation.

In the early 1990s, Konstantin Lifschitz received a scholarship from the Russian Cultural Foundation. At the same time, he began giving concerts in major European cities such as Paris, Amsterdam, Vienna, Munich, and Milan. With the Moscow Virtuosi under the direction of Vladimir Spivakov, he toured Japan, and in Europe he performed with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic under the direction of Yuri Temirkanov. In other European cities, he performed with artists such as Mischa Maisky and Gidon Kremer. For his first recording, he received the ECHO Klassik Award in 1995 as “Young Artist of the Year.” The following year, he was nominated for a Grammy Award for his recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations.

At the age of 13, he gave his first piano recital at the House of the Unions in Moscow, which was enthusiastically received. Afterwards, his concert life began at leading festivals and in the world’s most important concert halls. He has performed with the most renowned international orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra Hamburg, the MDR Symphony Orchestra Leipzig, the SWR Symphony Orchestra, the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI, and the Danish National Symphony Orchestra.

As a soloist, Konstantin Lifschitz has performed with leading conductors such as Mstislav Rostropovich, Vladimir Spivakov, Yuri Temirkanov, Sir Neville Marriner, Bernard Haitink, Sir Roger Norrington, Fabio Luisi, Marek Janowski, Eliahu Inbal, Mikhail Jurowski, Andrei Boreiko, Dmitry Sitkovetsky, Alexander Rudin, and Christopher Hogwood.

As a chamber musician, Konstantin Lifschitz has performed with artists such as Gidon Kremer, Maxim Vengerov, Vadim Repin, Mischa Maisky, Mstislav Rostropovich, Natalia Gutman, Dmitry Sitkovetsky, Lynn Harrell, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Daishin Kashimoto, Leila Josefowicz, Carolin Widmann, Jörg Widmann, Sol Gabetta, Eugene Ugorski, and Alexander Rudin.

Highlights of the past season included a return solo recital in the Grand Hall of the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, an invitation for piano recitals at the Tchaikovsky Hall and the “Zaryadye” Hall, both in Moscow, a Bach cycle in Kaohsiung and Taipei with a total of nine concerts, and a “play and conduct” concert with the Musica Viva Chamber Orchestra. He also appeared at numerous festivals such as VERÃO CLÁSSICO, Les Nuits Pianistiques Festival in Aix-en-Provence, and the Würzburg Bach Festival.

Konstantin Lifschitz has increasingly appeared as a conductor as well. He has led ensembles and orchestras such as the Moscow Virtuosi, the Century Orchestra Osaka, the Solisti Di Napoli, the Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra Wernigerode, the St. Christopher Chamber Orchestra Vilnius, the Moscow Musica Viva Chamber Orchestra, the Ensemble Lux Aeterna and the Gabrieli Choir Budapest, the Dalarna Sinfonietta Falun, and the Arpeggione Chamber Orchestra Hohenems. Conducting from the piano, he recorded Bach’s seven harpsichord concertos with the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, which led to another European tour. In 2019, he successfully led the China tour of the Lucerne Chamber Philharmonic, which he had founded and directed artistically.

Konstantin Lifschitz’s recording Saisons Russes, featuring works by Ravel, Debussy, Stravinsky, and Yakoulov, was released by Orfeo in November 2016. Many of his other CD and DVD releases have also received outstanding critical acclaim. Among other recordings with Orfeo are Bach’s Musical Offering, his St. Anne Prelude and Fugue, and three Frescobaldi toccatas (2007); Gottfried von Einem’s Piano Concerto with the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra (2009); Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto and Mozart’s Piano Concerto K. 456 with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (2010); Bach’s Art of Fugue (2010); and the Goldberg Variations (2015).

In 2008, a live recording of Lifschitz’s performance of both books of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier at the Miami International Piano Festival was released on DVD by VAI. In 2014, all of Beethoven’s violin sonatas with Daishin Kashimoto were released by Warner Classics. In 2020, to celebrate the composer’s 250th anniversary, Lifschitz released a CD and vinyl box set of Beethoven’s complete 32 piano sonatas on Alpha Classics (live recordings). His most recent CD, released in 2022, is dedicated to toccatas by Bach and Peter Seabourne. His latest digital release is another Bach recording, which accompanies and illustrates his Bach Pilgrimage Book (Book of Hours, Days, and Seasons with J.S. Bach).

Konstantin Lifschitz is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music in London and has taught his own class at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts since 2008, where he has held an artistic professorship since 2023.