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Daniil Trifonov emerged as one of the major new stars of the piano in the late 2010s. He is also active as a composer.

Trifonov was born in Nizhny Novgorod, then part of the Soviet Union, on March 5, 1991. His father was a composer, and his mother was a music teacher. Trifonov took up the piano at five and made rapid progress. In 2000, his family moved to Moscow, and he enrolled at the Gnessin School of Music, studying piano with Tatiana Zelikman. At her recommendation, he moved to the U.S. in 2009 for piano studies with Sergey Babayan at the Cleveland Institute of Music. He also studied composition in both Moscow and Cleveland. In 2011, he released a pair of albums in Poland, one on the Dux label and one for the Fryderyk Chopin Institute. Trifonov began to rack up important competition wins, culminating in first prizes at the Artur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition and the International Tchaikovsky Composition in 2011. The latter led to the opportunity to record Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 in B flat minor, Op. 23, with the Mariinsky Orchestra under Valery Gergiev, and Trifonov was soon in high demand for both concerts and recordings.

He wisely limited his appearances in the year after the Tchaikovsky Competition win to 85, although he could have played many more. Making his debut at Carnegie Hall in 2013, Trifonov settled in New York. That year, he signed with the Deutsche Grammophon label, and an album version of his Carnegie Hall recital was released there that year. He has made recital appearances at major halls in many countries, including Wigmore Hall in London, the Musikverein in Vienna, and the Salle Pleyel in Paris. His concerto credits include appearances with most of the world's top orchestras, such as the New York Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic, and the Russian National Orchestra; his concerts draw an unusual amount of enthusiastic critical praise.

For the 2018-2019 season, Trifonov served as artist-in-residence with the Berlin Philharmonic. He has also been active as a composer, premiering his own Piano Concerto in Cleveland in 2014. By 2020, he had released a dozen albums on Deutsche Grammophon. Focusing on core late Romantic and post-Romantic repertory, he earned a Grammy Award in 2018 for his recording of Liszt's Transcendental Etudes. In 2020, Trifonov released the album Silver Age, featuring works by Stravinsky, Prokofiev, and Scriabin. Trifonov returned with several new albums in the 2020s, including Rachmaninoff for Two, on which he was joined by his teacher Babayan in 2023. ~ James Manheim

Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach was one of four J.S. Bach sons who attained renown in classical music. He is generally ranked behind Carl Philipp Emanuel in importance, but stands about on equal footing with Wilhelm Friedemann and Johann Christian. Johann Christoph Friedrich (generally referred to as "Friedrich") is known as the "Bückeburg" Bach, since he served at the court there from 1750, when he was just 18, until his death in 1795. His early music reflected the style of his father, while his mature compositions began showing Italian influences, offering a sort of cross between the German and Italian schools. His late works began to exhibit Classical characteristics. To clear up matters about the large Bach family and his position within it, Friedrich was the oldest surviving son of J.S. Bach and his second wife Anna Magdalena, and was the third oldest of the four Bach sons who attained musical prominence: Wilhelm Friedemann was the oldest, born 1710, followed by Carl Philipp Emanuel (b. 1714) (their mother being Maria Barbara Bach), and the last was Johann Christian (b. 1735).

Friedrich was given his first music lessons by his father and later by a cousin of his father, Johann Elias Bach. When he was about 17 Friedrich enrolled at the University of Leipzig in preparation for a career in law, but left after a year, apparently because his father had become seriously ill. (The elder Bach died in July 1750.) Friedrich must have decided that not only would funds for his education be lacking, but that he must choose a career in music since this was where his greatest talents lay. After all, he was by now a keyboard player of virtuoso rank. Moreover, he was offered an attractive post in the chamber orchestra at the Bückeburg court, under Count Wilhelm of Schaumberg-Lippe.

In 1759 he was appointed concertmaster of the orchestra, though he had, in effect, already served in that capacity for three years. While his position was secure and his work with the highly-respected chamber ensemble more than satisfactory to the Court, his music seems not to have been highly regarded or performed often.

With arrival at Court in 1771 of Johann Gottfried Herder, Friedrich's creative juices seems to have been stimulated, as the two collaborated on several successful choral and dramatic compositions, including the cantata Michaels Sieg and the oratorio Die Kindheit Jesu. Herder's departure five years later was a blow to the composer, and in 1778 he took leave of his post for a trip to England to visit his brother Johann Christoph. It was in London that he grew fond of Mozart's music from the many concerts he attended.

After his return to Bückeburg, that same year, Friedrich continued to compose at a fairly prolific pace, his music divulging a more Classical bent. The Court was now under the rule of Count Philipp Ernst (Count Wilhelm died in 1777), but still enjoyed high musical standards. Friedrich wrote his last symphony in 1794, remaining active until his last days.

In his day, Johann Sebastian Bach was better known as a virtuoso organist than as a composer. His sacred music, organ and choral works, and other instrumental music had an enthusiasm and seeming freedom that concealed immense rigor. Bach's use of counterpoint was brilliant and innovative, and the immense complexities of his compositional style -- which often included religious and numerological symbols that seem to fit perfectly together in a profound puzzle of special codes -- still amaze musicians today. Many consider him the greatest composer of all time.

Bach was born in Eisenach in 1685. He was taught to play the violin and harpsichord by his father, Johann Ambrosius, a court trumpeter in the service of the Duke of Eisenach. Young Johann was not yet ten when his father died, leaving him orphaned. He was taken in by his recently married oldest brother, Johann Christoph, who lived in Ohrdruf. Because of his excellent singing voice, Bach attained a position at the Michaelis monastery at Lüneberg in 1700. His voice changed a short while later, but he stayed on as an instrumentalist. After taking a short-lived post in Weimar in 1703 as a violinist, Bach became organist at the Neue Kirche in Arnstadt (1703-1707). His relationship with the church council was tenuous as the young musician often shirked his responsibilities, preferring to practice the organ. One account describes a four-month leave granted Bach to travel to Lubeck, where he would familiarize himself with the music of Dietrich Buxtehude. He returned to Arnstadt long after he was expected and much to the dismay of the council. He then briefly served at St. Blasius in Mühlhausen as organist, beginning in June 1707, and married his cousin, Maria Barbara Bach, that fall. Bach composed his famous Toccata and Fugue in D minor (BWV 565) and his first cantatas while in Mühlhausen, but quickly outgrew the musical resources of the town. He next took a post for the Duke of Sachsen-Weimar in 1708, serving as court organist and playing in the orchestra, eventually becoming its leader in 1714. He wrote many organ compositions during this period, including his Orgel-Büchlein, and also began writing the preludes and fugues that would become Das wohltemperierte Klavier (The Well-Tempered Klavier). Owing to politics between the Duke and his officials, Bach left Weimar and secured a post in December 1717 as Kapellmeister at Köthen. In 1720, Bach's wife suddenly died, leaving him with four children (three others had died in infancy). A short while later, he met his second wife, soprano Anna Magdalena Wilcke, whom he married in December 1721. She would bear 13 children, though only five would survive childhood. The six Brandenburg Concertos (BWV 1046-51), among many other secular works, date from his Köthen years. Bach became Kantor of the Thomas School in Leipzig in May 1723 (after the post was turned down by Georg Philipp Telemann) and held the position until his death. It was in Leipzig that he composed the bulk of his religious and secular cantatas. Bach eventually became dissatisfied with this post, not only because of its meager financial rewards, but also because of onerous duties and inadequate facilities. Thus he took on other projects, chief among which was the directorship of the city's Collegium Musicum, an ensemble of professional and amateur musicians who gave weekly concerts, in 1729. He also became music director at the Dresden Court in 1736, in the service of Frederick Augustus II; though his duties were vague and apparently few, they allowed him the freedom to compose what he wanted. Bach began making trips to Berlin in the 1740s, not least because his son Carl Philipp Emanuel served as a court musician there. The Goldberg Variations, one of the few pieces by Bach to be published in his lifetime, appeared in 1741. In May 1747, the composer was warmly received by King Frederick II of Prussia, for whom he wrote the gloriously abstruse Musical Offering (BWV 1079). Among Bach's last works was his 1749 Mass in B minor. Besieged by diabetes, he died on July 28, 1750. ~ Robert Cummings