Mishka Rushdie Momen
Elise Jennings
Astrid Boissier
Hailed as “one of the most thoughtful and sensitive of British pianists” (The Times), Mishka Rushdie Momen captivates audiences with her refined and expressive playing.
Mishka Rushdie Momen’s wide repertoire focuses on Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and Schumann, whilst reaching back to Gibbons and Rameau. Committed to performing new music, Mishka Rushdie Momen has commissioned works by Nico Muhly and Vijay Iyer, and premiered An Inviting Object by Héloïse Werner at the Lucerne Summer Festival.
Recent and upcoming concerto highlights include debuts with Royal Danish Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Turku Philharmonic Orchestra and Mannheim Chamber Orchestra. Further orchestral engagements to date include City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Deutsche Kammerakademie Neuss, Orchestre National d’Ile de France, Britten Sinfonia and play/directing Mozart K.271 with Luzerner Sinfonieorchester, working with Dinis Sousa, Anu Tali, Paul Meyer, Case Scaglione and Natalia Ponomarchuk.
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Rushdie Momen’s recital highlights include performances at Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, Lucerne Festival, Tonhalle Zurich, Wigmore Hall, Antwerp’s deSingel, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and Leeds Piano Competition and, in the US, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Phillips Collection in Washington DC, New York’s 92Y, Carnegie Hall, Portland Piano and The Maestro Foundation in Santa Monica. Her 2024/25 recitals include Wigmore Hall, Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Aldeburgh Festival, and the re-opening festival of the Frick Collection in New York.
Equally at home as a chamber musician, Rushdie Momen’s chamber partners include Ian Bostridge, Mark Padmore, Joshua Bell, Midori, Angela Hewitt, Steven Isserlis, Timothy Ridout and Zlatomir Fung, with festival performances including Rheingau Festival, Gstaad Menuhin Festival, Oeiras International Piano Festival, Chamonix Vallée Classics, Hindsgavl, Chipping Campden, Trasimeno Festival, the new Casals Forum at Kronberg, and IMS Prussia Cove.
Rushdie Momen’s latest release Reformation (Hyperion, 2024) presents the works of William Byrd, John Bull, Orlando Gibbons and Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, performed on the modern piano. The album was described in The Times’ selection of the best releases of 2024 as “a triumph”, as “quietly beguiling” (The Guardian), “performed with thrilling exuberance and subtlety” (The Spectator), topped the Classical Charts in July 2024 and chosen to be as a Classic FM Discovery of the Week.
Her debut solo recording, Variations, was released in October 2019 by SOMM Recordings, featuring works by Robert and Clara Schumann, Brahms, and Mendelssohn. Mishka Rushdie Momen was The Times Arts critics’ chosen nominee in the field of classical music for their 2021 Breakthrough Award, given by Sky Arts and The South Bank Show, who profiled her for an episode of the programme broadcast in July 2021.
Mishka Rushdie Momen studied with Joan Havill and Imogen Cooper at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. She also studied periodically with Richard Goode, and at the Kronberg Academy with Sir András Schiff, who has presented her in recital and orchestral dates across the USA and Europe. Mishka Rushdie Momen’s studies at the Kronberg Academy were generously funded by the Henle Foundation.
“There was a perfect balance between complexity and sheer poetry in Mishka Rushdie Momen’s supremely poised Thursday morning piano recital”
“One of the most thoughtful and sensitive of British pianists…”
“The way Momen shaped the winding middle part, sometimes pushing it forward, sometimes letting it fall into the background, was actually the most moving part of an altogether wonderful concert”
“.…an innate musical sensibility combined with true technical brilliance”
“The interplay between Mishka Rushdie Momen’s piano and Steven Isserlis’s lustrous cello was delicately matched, nothing overstated.”
“Her interpretations reveal a special feeling for Romantic music and the art of rubato”
“…her ability to swap from gripping muscular power to graceful tenderness showed why she has won such acclaim in the last two years”
“[Isserlis’] partnership with Rushdie Momen was compelling too, the pianist stealthily pouncing on the sharp, accented figures of the first movement and giving as good as her partner…”
“Throughout the disc, one is struck by Rushdie Momen’s tonal command and wide-ranging technique…This is a rare phenomenon today, particularly from a performer so young”
“Isserlis and Rushdie Momen plunged straight in, with a striking, architectonic account of the introduction which was very much a dialogue between equals.… this was riveting music making with both performers bringing a remarkable intensity to the performance”
“[Clara Schumann’s Variations op. 20 were] played in a way which revealed the music’s tenderly exquisite workmanship”
“A clever interlinked programme of variations by Romantic and contemporary composers…full of vim and vigour throughout”
“…the piano’s sparkling, youthful clarity [was] uplifting…”