Gilead Mishory

Gilead Mishory was born in 1960 in Jerusalem and studied at the Rubin Academy. On the recommendation of Alfred Brendel he completed his studies with Gerhard Oppitz in Munich and with Hans Leygraf in Salzburg at the “Mozarteum”.

Gilead Mishory is the first pianist to have recorded the complete piano works and chamber music with piano by Leos Janácek. Other CDs with works by Haydn, Brahms, Bartók, Debussy, his own compositions and numerous radio-recordings received instant critical acclaim. Enthusiastic reviews of the press describe him as a “magician of sound”, a “technically perfect poet of the piano” and a “pianist with a sense of sound, charm and esprit”.

Mishory’s cycle “Lider-Togbuch” after poems by Sutzkever, premièred in 1998, was his breakthrough as a composer. His affinity to literature as a source of inspiration is shown also in his “Hebrew Ballads”, with poems by Else Lasker-Schüler, “Fugitive Pieces” for piano, after the novel by Anne Michaels, the string quartet “Psalm” after Paul Celan, or ”Di Vayte Haymat Mayne”, for tenor and orchestra, after poems by Marc Chagall. His first opera, “Isaac’s Youth”, was completed in 2010. The new CD with Mishory’s own works came out in 2011 by NEOS. “To Aeneas: you. Nocturne” was composed on commission of the European Piano Contest Bremen, 2014 and is published by “Peermusic Classical”. The other four movements of the cycle followed it.

Since 2000 Gilead Mishory is senior professor at the renowned University of Music in Freiburg as the successor of Seemann, Levin and Béroff and is leading there an excellent piano-class. He is regularly invited to give masterclasses all over the world.