Distinguished Pianist Misha Dichter Celebrates 50th Anniversary Of Ravinia Debut With Return Performances

Mr. Dichter to perform in chamber recital with the Argus Quartet, as well as in duo piano recital with wife and long-time collaborator, pianist Cipa Dichter.

In honor of the 50th anniversary of his debut at the Ravinia Festival, pianist Misha Dichter will perform with the Argus Quartet in chamber music recital at Bennett Gordon Hall (201 St Johns Ave, Highland Park, IL 60035) on Tuesday evening, July 24, 2018, at 6 pm. The program will include piano quintets by Shostakovitch and Dvo?ák, featuring Mr. Dichter alongside the Argus Quartet's violinists Clara Kim and Dana Kelley, violist Jason Issokson, and cellist Joann Whang.

The day prior, Mr. Dichter will be joined by his wife and longtime musical counterpart, pianist Cipa Dichter, in duo piano recital, Monday afternoon, July 23, 2018, 3 pm, also at Bennett Gordon Hall. The piano duo of Mr. and Mrs. Dichter will perform pieces by Schubert, Copland, and Ravel on the first half of the program; of the duo's previous performance of El Salón México by Aaron Copland, Frank Daykin of New York Concert Review wrote: "The Dichters' flair for dialogue between the two instruments was in full display, aided by the clever and faithful arrangement" (26 Feb 2018). To follow, Mr. Dichter will perform two etudes by Scriabin as well as Schubert's Piano Sonata in A major.

Full program details below:

Monday afternoon, July 23, 2018, at 3 pm

Schubert Fantasy in F minor for four-hands piano, D. 940
Copland El Salón México
Ravel La valse (for four-hands piano)
Scriabin Etude in F-sharp major, Op. 42 No. 4
Etude in B-flat minor, Op. 8 No. 11
Schubert Piano Sonata in A major, D. 959

Tickets at $10 are available for purchase through the Ravinia Festival website at https://www.ravinia.org/ShowDetails/Index?id=1434.

Tuesday evening, July 24, 2018, at 6 pm

Shostakovich Piano Quintet
Dvo?ák Piano Quintet No. 2

Tickets at $10 are available for purchase through the Ravinia Festival website at https://www.ravinia.org/ShowDetails/index?id=1435.

Mr. Dichter's performances are sponsored by Lynne and David B. Weinberg.

Misha Dichter is a pianist of global distinction who for over sixty years has thrilled audiences around the world with the authentic power and color of Russian Romanticism as well as the German Classical style.

Born in Shanghai to parents who had fled Poland at the outbreak of World War II, young Dichter and his family would move to Los Angeles at war's end where Misha began piano studies at the age of five. Going on to enroll at the Juilliard School in New York City, Misha won the Silver Medal at the 1966 International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, which helped to launch an enviable concert career. Shortly after, Mr. Dichter was the guest soloist in a Tanglewood performance of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 with Erich Leinsdorf and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, a concert that was broadcast nationally on NBC and subsequently recorded for RCA. In 1968, Mr. Dichter made his New York Philharmonic debut under the baton of Leonard Bernstein. Appearances followed with the Berlin Philharmonic, Amsterdam's Concertgebouw Orchestra, the principal London orchestras, and every major American orchestra.

A recognized champion of Leonard Bernstein's Symphony #2, Age of Anxiety, Mr. Dichter performed this work with David Zinman and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the 2016 Ravinia Festival. During the current season, Dichter collaborated on Age of Anxiety with Maestro Zinman and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, David Itkin and the University of North Texas Symphony Orchestra and Ward Stare and the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, while summer 2018 includes another performance with Gerard Schwarz at North Carolina's Eastern Music Festival. He will also be performing at the Ravinia and Aspen Festivals.

Mr. Dichter has performed and recorded with some of the most illustrious conductors of the 20th and 21st centuries, among them Leonard Bernstein, Pierre Boulez, Colin Davis, Lawrence Foster, Valery Gergiev, Carlo Maria Guilini, Bernard Haitink, Mariss Jansons, Kiril Kondrashin, Erich Leinsdorf, James Levine, Lorin Maazel, Neville Marriner, Kurt Masur, Riccardo Muti, Eugene Ormandy, Carlos Prieto, André Previn, Simon Rattle, Gerard Schwarz, Robert Shaw, Leonard Slatkin, Robert Spano, William Steinberg, Michael Tilson Thomas, Hans Vonk, Edo de Waart, David Zinman and Pinchas Zukerman, while notable chamber music collaborations have included violinists Itzhak Perlman, Mark Peskanov and Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, cellists Lynn Harrell and Yo-Yo Ma and the American, Cleveland, Emerson, Guarneri, Harlem, St. Petersburg and Tokyo string quartets. With his wife, pianist Cipa Dichter, Mr. Dichter has toured North America and Europe, presenting both masterworks and neglected scores of the two-piano and piano-four-hand repertoires. He has been seen frequently on national television and was the subject of an hour-long European television documentary.

Mr. Dichter's discography on the Philips, RCA, MusicMasters and Koch Classics labels are legendary, iconic and musically omnivorous, encompassing the major scores of Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Gershwin, Liszt, Mussorgsky, Schubert, Schumann, Stravinsky, and Tchaikovsky. A noted exponent of Liszt's piano works and a champion of the composer's forward-looking contributions to the development of music, Mr. Dichter was honored in 1988 with the "Grand Prix International du Disque Liszt," presented for his Philips recording of the Master's piano transcriptions. His first recording with Cipa Dichter is a three-CD set of Mozart's complete piano works for four hands and is available on the Nimbus label. American Record Guide called the album "an unmitigated delight," and Music Web International named it a 2005 "Record of the Year."

In 2007, Mr.Dichter took a three-month hiatus from the concert stage to deal with the onset of Dupuytren's Disease (a contracting of one or more fingers) which affected his right hand. After successful surgery followed by physical therapy, Mr. Dichter returned to public performance and became a supporter of, and spokesperson for, the American Society for Surgery of the Hand. A brief audio/video presentation, "Dupuytren's Contracture: Misha Dichter - A Pianist Reborn," is accessible on YouTube. In 2016, Mr. Dichter underwent surgery for the same ailment in the left hand. He has since recovered completely and recently returned to the New York concert stage, performing a recital at Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall on the "Key Pianists" series in February 2018.

Misha Dichter is an accomplished writer, having contributed articles to many leading publications, including The New York Times. He is also a talented sketch artist, and in 2012 an e-book of his music-related illustrations, "A Pianist's World in Drawings," was released by Rosetta Books. Available on Amazon.com, BN.com and from iTunes, the e-book compiles over 50 original drawings that were created over the span of Mr. Dichter's half-century career. (For more information, visit www.apianistsworldindrawings.com)

Fiercely dedicated to extending his artistic traditions to new generations of pianists, Misha Dichter has conducted widely attended masterclasses at major conservatories, universities and music festivals, including Aspen, Curtis, Eastman, Harvard, Juilliard, Yale and Holland's Conservatorium van Amsterdam. His own early teachers included the legendary Rosina Lhevinne and Aube Tzerko, a pupil of Artur Schnabel. Dichter also studied composition and analysis with Leonard Stein, a disciple of Arnold Schoenberg.

Misha Dichter and his wife, Cipa Dichter, reside in New York City, in a household ruled over by Baxter, their amiable Springer Spaniel. They have two sons and five grandchildren. He remains an avid tennis player and jogger.

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