LIPF & LSO perform Brahms & Beethoven

LIPF Artist-In-Residence, Alexander Kobrin, and Co-Artistic Director, Xun Pan, take the stage for an unforgettable concert with the Lancaster Symphony Orchestra! Featuring Johannes Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 15 and Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Concerto in C minor, Op 37.

Saturday, July 26, 2025 @ 3:00 PM

CONCERT AT THE BARSHINGER CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS
Franklin & Marshall Campus, College Avenue, Lancaster, PA 17603

Tickets for this performance are sold through the Lancaster International Piano Festival’s website. The button above will open a new page to their website.

PROGRAM
Brahms — Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, Op. 15
Beethoven — Piano Concerto in C minor, Op. 37

Meet The Pianists

Xun Pan

The highlights of Chinese-American pianist Xun Pan’s recent chamber music concerts were collaborations with the American String Quartet, Hai-Ye Ni, and the Gabriel Chamber Ensemble.

As a Steinway Artist, he was inducted into the Steinway & Sons Teacher Hall of Fame in 2023.

Mr. Pan received his early musical training from his grandmother and pianists-parents, Pan Yiming and Ying Shizhen. He continued his studies at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, Syracuse University in New York, and earned the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Rutgers University in New Jersey.

Mr. Pan has won many international piano competitions and awards, beginning with first prize in the 1986 China National Piano Competition in Beijing, and the "Dr. Luis Sigall" International Piano Competition in Chile in 1987, the International Festival Piano Competition in Korea in 1990, the Frinna Awerbuch International Piano Competition in New York in 1992, and the Artists International Competition in New York in 1993. A student of Theodore Lettvin, Mr. Pan has performed solo recitals worldwide from Carnegie Weill Hall to the Beijing National Center for Performing Arts. He has performed in Moscow, Santiago, Singapore, Beijing, Shanghai, London, Los Angeles, Frankfurt, Taipei, Budapest, Salzburg, Sicily, New York, Seoul, Pyongyang, Biel, Bern, Brussels, Vina Del Mar, Washington DC, Lisbon, Toronto, Boston, San Jose, San Francisco, and many other cities in the world. He “…excites his audience with extraordinary power and masterful technique.” (The Star-Ledger)

A noted chamber musician, Mr. Pan is the pianist of the Newstead Trio, Trio Clavino, and Gabriel Chamber Ensemble. Their work has been broadcast live on radio and television, and they have released several highly acclaimed recordings. Trio Clavino toured seven cities in China with Fulbright Grants managed by US Embassy in Beijing in 2014, and again in 2016. Mr. Pan has been served as a judge in many competitions include "Frinna Awerbuch" International Piano Competition in New York, United States Music Open Competition in Oakland, CA, United States International Music competition in Stanford, CA, Pancho Vladigerov International Piano Competition in Shumen, Bulgaria, and Maria Clara Cullell International Piano Competition in San Jose, Costa Rica.

Dr. Pan is the Director of Keyboard Studies of The Tell School of Music at Millersville University of Pennsylvania and is a visiting professor at many universities and conservatories in China, includes Central Conservatory of Music, China Conservatory of Music, Guangzhou Xinghai Conservatory of Music, Sichuan Conservatory of Music, China Northwest University for Nationalities, Fuzhou University, Yantai University, Shandong University, Qinghai Normal University, and Wenzhou University. He also taught master classes at Manhattan School of Music, Boston University, Frost School of Music at University of Miami, University of West Florida, Benjamin T Rome School of Music at The Catholic University of America, Dartmouth College, Mozarteum University (Austria), Bellini Music Institute (Italy), Tbilisi State Conservatoire (Georgia), and others. He taught and served as the Chairman of the Piano Department at Pennsylvania Academy of Music between 1996 and 2009.

Dr. Pan is one of the founding members and the Co-Artistic Director of the Lancaster International Piano Festival in Pennsylvania, USA. 

He performed the entire 32 piano sonatas, 10 piano/violin sonatas, 8 piano/cello works, and 13 piano trios of Beethoven to celebrate his 250th anniversary of birth a couple of years ago.

Alexander Kobrin

Called the “Van Cliburn of today” by the BBC, pianist Alexander Kobrin has placed himself at the forefront of today's performing musicians. His prize-winning performances have been praised for their brilliant technique, musicality, and emotional engagement with the audience. The New York Times has written that Mr. Kobrin was a “fastidious guide” to Schumann’s “otherworldly visions, pointing out hunters, flowers, haunted corners and friendly bowers, all captured in richly characterized vignettes.” “This was a performance that will be revered and remembered as a landmark of the regeneration of exceptional classical music in Central New York,” a critic wrote after Mr. Kobrin’s performance of the Second Piano Concerto by Johannes Brahms with Syracuse Symphony in Syracuse, NY.

In 2005, Mr. Kobrin was awarded the Nancy Lee and Perry R. Bass Gold Medal at the Twelfth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Fort Worth, TX. His numerous successes in competitions also include top prizes at the Busoni International Piano Competition (First Prize), Hamamatsu International Piano Competition (Top Prize), and Scottish International Piano Competition in Glasgow (First Prize)

Mr. Kobrin has performed with many of the world’s great orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, Tokyo Philharmonic, Russian National Orchestra, Belgrade Philharmonic, English Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra Verdi, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Moscow Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Dallas Symphony, Berliner Symphony, Chicago Sinfonietta, Swedish Radio Symphony, Birmingham Symphony, Warsaw Philharmonic, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. He has collaborated with such conductors as Mikhail Pletnev, Mikhail Jurovsky, Mark Elder, Vassiliy Sinaisky, James Conlon, Claus Peter Flor, Alexander Lazarev, Vassiliy Petrenko and Bramwell Tovey.

He has appeared in recital at major halls worldwide, including Carnegie Zankel Hall and Avery Fisher Hall in New York, the Kennedy Centre in Washington, Albert Hall and Wigmore Hall in London, Louvre Auditorium, Salle Gaveau and Salle Cortot in Paris, Munich Herkulesaal and Berliner Filarmonia Hall in Germany, the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatoire, Sheung Wan Civic Centre in Hong Kong, as well as Sala Verdi in Milan and many others. Other past performances have included recitals at Bass Hall for the Cliburn Series, the Washington Performing Arts Society, La Roque d'Antheron, the Ravinia Festival, the Beethoven Easter Festival, Busoni Festival, the renowned Klavier-Festival Ruhr, the Festival Musique dans le Grésivaudan, the International Keyboard Institute & Festival, and annual concert tours in Japan, China, and Taiwan.

Though widely acclaimed as a performer, Mr. Kobrin’s teaching has been an inspiration to many students through his passion for music. From 2003 to 2010 he served on the faculty of the Russian State Gnessin’s Academy of Music. In 2010 Alexander Kobrin was named the L. Rexford Distinguished Chair in Piano at the Schwob School of Music at Columbus State University, and from 2013 until 2017 was a member of the celebrated Artist Faculty of New York University’s Steinhardt School. In July 2017, Mr. Kobrin joined the faculty of the renowned Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY. Mr. Kobrin has also given masterclasses in Europe and Asia, the International Piano Series, and at the Conservatories of Japan and China. In 2020, he became co-director of Hiiumaa Homecoming Festival in Estonia.

Mr. Kobrin has been a jury member for many international piano competitions, including the Van Cliburn in Fort Worth, TX, Busoni International Piano Competition in Bolzano, Hamamatsu International Piano Competition, the Blüthner International Piano Competition in Vienna, E-Competition in Fairbanks, AK, and the Neuhaus International Piano Festival in Moscow.

Mr. Kobrin has released recordings on the Harmonia Mundi, Quartz, and Centaur labels, covering a wide scope of the piano literature, to critical acclaim. His Schumann album, released on Centaur Records, has been included into the top-5 albums of the year in 2015 by Fanfare Magazine. Gramophone Magazine raved about his Cliburn Competition release on Harmonia Mundi, writing that “in [Rachmaninoff’s] Second Sonata (played in the 1931 revision), despite fire-storms of virtuosity, there is always room for everything to tell and Kobrin achieves a hypnotic sense of the music’s dark necromancy.”

Mr. Kobrin was born in 1980 in Moscow. At the age of five, he was enrolled in the world-famous Gnessin Special School of Music after which he attended the prestigious Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatoire. His teachers have included renowned professors Tatiana Zelikman and Lev Naumov.

Mr. Kobrin immigrated to the United States in 2010 and became its citizen in 2015.

Mr. Kobrin is a Shigeru Kawai artist.