Dmitry Shishkin to Open PSO Season with Rachmaninoff Performance

Award-winning pianist Dmitry Shishkin will open the Princeton Symphony Orchestra's (PSO's) 2026-27 Season at concerts the weekend of October 17-18. He will perform Sergei Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43 on a program showcasing members of the orchestra with Joan Tower's Suite from Concerto for Orchestra and Béla Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra, Sz. 116, BB 123.

The Saturday performance begins at 7:30pm, and Sunday's 4pm performance includes a 3pm pre-concert talk. Edward T. Cone Music Director Rossen Milanov conducts both performances and hosts Sunday's talk at Richardson Auditorium, on the campus of Princeton University.

Maestro Milanov says, “I look forward to welcoming Dmitry to Princeton. His is an artist with unique elegance, virtuosity, and musical conviction.”

Silver Medalist at the XVI International Tchaikovsky Competition and winner of the 73rd Geneva International Music Competition, Dmitry Shishkin has earned international acclaim for his creative and individual approach to music. Critics have described him as an “electrifying and flamboyant pianist, of great musical honesty and rigor.” In the 2025-26 season, he performed internationally at Festivals such as Verbier, in recitals on the West Coast, East Asia, and Europe, and with orchestras including the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic, the Hong Kong Sinfonietta, Santa Barbara Symphony, Bilkent Symphony, and the Real Orquesta Sinfonica de Sevilla. A native of Russia, the 34-year-old pianist began his studies at the Gnessin Moscow School of Music with Mikhail Khokhlov, continued at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory under Eliso Virsaladze, and later studied at the “Vincenzo Bellini” State Conservatory in Catania with Epifanio Comis, and at the Hochschule für Musik in Hannover with Arie Vardi. He is now based in Switzerland.

Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini was inspired by violin virtuoso Niccólo Paganini's devilishly demanding 24th Caprice in A Minor, the theme of which Rachmaninoff repeats, inverts, and famously combines with the medieval liturgical Dies irae theme. Tower's Suite from Concerto for Orchestra is a 12-minute distillation of her Concerto for Orchestra (1991), the structure of which, like Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra (1943), allows for sections of the orchestra to be highlighted in a virtuosic manner. Commissioned by Boston Symphony conductor Serge Koussevitzky in memory of his deceased wife, Natalie, and written while the composer was in the early stages of leukemia, Bartók's five-movement Concerto is considered the quintessential concerto for orchestra and is the composer's most frequently performed work.