Dimitris Sgouros
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Dimitris Sgouros (born August 30, 1969) is a well known pianist.
He was born in Athens, Greece. Sgouros began playing the piano at the age of six, and gave his first concert at seven. At the age of 12, he graduated from the Athens Conservatory with diplomas as both a pianist and piano teacher, winning the first prize and a gold medal.
In 1982, when only 12 years old, he played Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3, a technically very demanding work for piano, at Carnegie Hall in New York, with the National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Mstislav Rostropovitch. He was wildly applauded, and his performance that evening was called one of the most impressive musical debuts of the century. "The boy is a miracle of nature, a musical phenomenon sent by God," said Rostropovitch.
Sgouros continued his studies at the Royal Academy of London and later at the University of Maryland, College Park in the United States. He graduated from both institutions with the highest marks. Besides his unusual musical talents, the artist is fluent in six languages and graduated with honors from Athens University's mathematics faculty.
Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, China, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Romania, Russia, South Africa, Spain and Turkey are only some of the countries where he has dazzled the music world. He has performed for the royal families of Britain and Sweden and played under the baton of names like Herbert von Karajan, Leonard Bernstein, Yemil Tabakov, Kurt Masur, Yevgeni Svetlanov. Since March 1988, three "Sgouros Festivals" have been instituted, in Hamburg, Ljubljana and Singapore.
