Now in the sixth decade of a distinguished global career, Misha Dichter remains one of America’s most popular artists, extending a musical heritage from the Russian Romantic School, as personified by Rosina Lhevinne, his mentor at The Juilliard School, and the German Classical style that was passed on to him by Aube Tzerko, a pupil of Artur Schnabel. Throughout this storied career, Dichter has performed and recorded with some of the most illustrious conductors of the 20th and 21st centuries, among them Leonard Bernstein, Pierre Boulez, Lorin Maazel, André Previn, and Michael Tilson Thomas. Dichter’s 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, Argus, Cleveland, Emerson, Guarneri, Harlem, St. Petersburg and Tokyo string quartets.
A nearly annual Ravinia guest artist since age 22, the pianist triumphantly marks his 50th season at the festival—and 78th festival performance—with the alternating vigor and sentimentality of Brahms and Prokofiev sonatas. He also pays homage to his Polish-immigrant parents with performances of polonaise and mazurka dances by Chopin and Beethoven. As the pianist himself has said, performing the great repertoire is like “having a conversation every day with the composer" (KRWG).
