ROBERT COHEN
Cello
Robert Cohen made his concerto debut at the Royal Festival Hall in London at age 12, and for the forty years of his brilliant international career since then he has been one of the leading cellists of our time.
It is easy to hear what the fuss is about, he plays like a God
New York Stereo Review
Invited to perform concertos throughout the world by such conductors as Claudio Abbado, Kurt Masur, Riccardo Muti and Sir Simon Rattle, Cohen has also collaborated in chamber music with many celebrated soloists and ensembles, for example Yehudi Menuhin and the Amadeus String Quartet, including in their CD of the Schubert Quintet on DGG.
He cut his first record at 19, Elgar’s concerto for cello, with the London Philharmonic (EMI). He was awarded a silver disc for selling 250,000 copies, going on to make countless records with BIS, EMI, Deutsche Grammophon and Sony and landing a long-term contract with Decca.
He studied with William Pleeth, Jacqueline du Pré and Mstislav Rostropovich and went on to become an inspired teacher in his own right, being appointed to the post of professor at the Royal Academy of Music in London. There, the Cohen Lectures, an annual cycle of conferences in six parts on the art of studying and performing music, got off the ground in 2014. He was invited to teach the course for soloists at the Accademia Perosi in Italy in 2016.
In addition to his career as a soloist, Cohen also directed the Charleston Manor Festival from 1989 to 2011. He has been the legendary Fine Arts Quartet’s resident cellist since 2012. He appears on a monthly radio programme in the United States for WUWM entitled On That Note, he is an editor with HighbrowTV and he manages celloclinic.com.