Inon Barnatan

Inon Barnatan is an Israeli American pianist known for lucid, singing playing and for programs that put familiar concertos next to less traveled repertoire. He was a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's young artist program, has recorded Beethoven's complete piano concertos, and leads the La Jolla Music Society SummerFest as its music director. In this directory he appears with the Pittsburgh Symphony, San Diego Symphony, Fort Worth Symphony, and Nashville Symphony, mostly in Beethoven, plus Liszt's First Concerto.

Barnatan is a pianist of clear textures and long lines rather than thunder. He tends to shape a phrase the way a singer would, letting the top voice carry while the inner parts stay transparent, and he is unusually attentive to soft playing, so the quiet passages carry as much weight as the loud ones. Beethoven's Fourth Concerto suits that instinct exactly: the soloist opens alone, quietly, before the orchestra has said a word, and the slow movement is a standoff between growling strings and a pleading piano that gradually calms them. Liszt's First Concerto is the opposite temperament, compact and theatrical, with a triangle chiming through the third movement and themes that return transformed. Expect crisp articulation, flexible tempos, and cadenzas that sound thought through rather than dropped in.

Barnatan was born in Tel Aviv in 1979 and began piano lessons as a child. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London with Christopher Elton and worked with Leon Fleisher. He moved to the United States in 2006 and was named a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's Bowers Program for emerging artists. In 2009 he received an Avery Fisher Career Grant, and in 2015 the Lincoln Center Award for Emerging Artists. From 2014 to 2017 he served as the inaugural artist in association with the New York Philharmonic, an unusual multi season residency for a pianist. He has toured extensively in duo with the cellist Alisa Weilerstein. Since 2019 he has been music director of the La Jolla Music Society SummerFest in California. His recordings include the complete Beethoven piano concertos with Alan Gilbert and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields.