What makes a Rachmaninoff performance reach beyond virtuosity? Boris Giltburg, winner of the 2013 Queen Elisabeth Competition, is known for bringing poetic imagination and analytical insight together. He will join SSO in Hanoi as guest pianist for Masterworks: LONGING, Thiên Cổ Tình.
The Artist
Winning the 2013 Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels, one of the world’s most prestigious piano competitions, marked a defining moment in Boris Giltburg’s international career. Since then, he has built a distinctive artistic profile through his interpretations of the great works of the repertoire, shaped by a rare balance of poetic imagination and analytical insight.
As a recording artist, Giltburg has received an Opus Klassik, one of Germany’s leading classical music awards, and France’s Diapason d’Or for his Rachmaninoff and Shostakovich albums. He has also received a Gramophone Award for his recording with the Pavel Haas Quartet.
His career has brought him to the world’s major stages, performing with orchestras including the Czech Philharmonic and the Gewandhaus Orchestra, as well as giving recitals at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. His artistic curiosity also extends beyond the concert stage, most notably in his 2020 project to film and record all 32 of Beethoven’s piano sonatas.
From the 2026/ 27 season through 2030/31, Giltburg continues to serve as an Associate Artist at Wigmore Hall in London, continuing a close relationship with one of the world’s most reowned concert halls.
Giltburg and Rachmaninov
Rachmaninov holds a particularly important place in Boris Giltburg’s artistic journey. Widely regarded as one of today’s leading Rachmaninov interpreters, he is currently undertaking a project to record the composer’s complete piano works
Significantly, BBC Music Magazine has captured the remarkable breadth of Giltburg’s musicianship, from colour and pacing to emotional shading and energy.
“The range of his playing – from colour to pacing to emotional shading and sheer heady propulsion – makes for compulsive listening”
This highlights what makes Giltburg’s approach to Rachmaninov so compelling: a performance can move from intimacy to intensity, with every nuance contributing to a larger expressive arc. Among the works that have become particularly significant in this journey is the Piano Concerto No. 2.
The Piano Concerto No. 2 and the Journey of “LONGING”
Giltburg recorded the Piano Concerto No. 2 for Naxos in 2017 with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra under Carlos Miguel Prieto. The Gramophone praised the recording for offering a new perspective on a much-loved and well-appreciated masterpiece, with Giltburg’s great interpretation of the piece, while bringing his own colour in.
Giltburg himself considers the concerto one of the greatest works ever written. Beyond its dazzling virtuosity and emotional weight, he sees in the music a rich lyricism and a sense of light, qualities that reveal a more expansive and nuanced side of the work.
Rachmaninov completed the concerto in 1901, following a period of crisis and depression after the failure of his Symphony No. 1 in 1897. After treatment with Dr Nikolai Dahl, he returned to composing, completed the work and dedicated it to Dahl. This journey from crisis towards recovery gives the concerto a natural connection to the spirit of LONGING, where memory, longing, love and separation all reach towards what remains just beyond our grasp.
On the evening of 9 October 2026 at the Ho Guom Opera House, Boris Giltburg will perform this deeply personal work with the SSO in Masterworks: LONGING – Thiên Cổ Tình, alongside Hoang Duong’s Huong ve Hanoi, Trinh Cong Son’s Nho mua thu Hanoi and excerpts from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet.
