Yannis Tsitselikis

"As a conductor I have collaborated with the extraordinary cellist, Yannis Tsitselikis, on multiple occasions in both the United States and Europe. For me, the pleasure of working with a musician like Mr. Tsitselikis is that I connect to a lineage balancing flawless technique with a very personal and profound relationship to the repertoire.

The music-making is always natural, the rhythms fluid enough for maximizing expression and yet stable enough for the orchestra to maintain a moment-by-moment connection as it joins with the soloist's unfolding musical ideas. He is free in his music-making, yet very easy to accompany because his ideas are both entirely musical and so clearly etched out. The result feels both well-prepared and completely improvisatory.

There is one particular aspect of Mr. Tsitselikis' musicianship that I wish to emphasize: His performances always reveal the real music beneath the surface. With such a commanding technique he is completely engaged in searching for the underlying truth of the work. Not confined to being merely "musical" as he performs, he probes for a larger vision. He truly plays ideas rather than notes, and he is able to reveal hidden often-architecture. He takes enormous risks but never to showcase himself or his astounding mastery of the instrument. Instead it is all done in service to the music.

I write this recommendation as someone who has joined Yannis Tsitselikis for over a decade in enough repertoire to speak confidently: His Dvorak Concerto remains a model of the work in my memory; his Rococo Variations transformed a short work into a novel of grace, dee[ emotions and an ocean of expressive range; his Fauré Elegie was a model of restrained yet profound grief; his Saint Saëns Cello Concerto was revelatory, and it truly rescued a work often performed by students back into a major contribution to the cello repertoire; and finally, his world premiere of a very challenging cello concerto by Theodore Antoniou was prepared at such a supremely high level that it felt like we were playing a work already long-established as standard repertoire.

Yannis Tsitselikis is, simply put, an extraordinary musician with a sensibility that connects him to the great Romantic traditions of the past. He is a phenomenal cellist, a completely professional soloist, and a refined master of music in all its respects.

Yannis Tsitselikis has my very highest recommendation. "