Alon Kariv

Winner of the 2025 Kissinger Sommer Internationales Musikfestival's KlavierOlymp (Bad Kissingen Piano Olympiad), Alon Kariv is one of the most distinguished young pianists of his native country, Israel. Since his early childhood, he has won first prizes in all Israeli national piano competitions and performed throughout the country’s most prestigious halls and concert series. He has performed with many major Israeli orchestras, including the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra and Haifa Symphony. Elsewhere, he has played with such eminent ensembles as the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, English Chamber Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Slovenian Radio and Television Orchestra, Kyiv Virtuosi Symphony Orchestra and many others. 

 

Alon has performed in the US including at New York’s Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center and Merkin Hall, and in Europe he has toured to the UK, Germany, Holland, Italy, Switzerland, Poland and Slovenia. In 2024, he undertook a six-city US tour with the Kyiv Virtuosi Symphony Orchestra, playing Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No.1, including at Carnegie Hall. Conductors who have invited Alon include Zubin Mehta, Julian Rachlin, Ivor Bolton, Ilan Volkov, Roberto Fores Veses, Yoel Levy, Steven Mercurio, George Pehlivanian and Karl-Heinz Steffens.

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He was recently selected to perform in the prestigious ‘Rising Stars’ series at the Basel Stadtcasino, in Switzerland. This season also sees Alon make debuts with the Israel Camerata Jerusalem, under its Music Director, Avner Biron, in recital at the Auditorium Maximum in Warsaw, and in concerto at the 2026 Bad Kissingen Music Festival. Later this year he will tour Eastern Europe with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of their Music Director, Julian Rachlin. Next season he will tour the UK with the Czech National Symphony Orchestra, under their Music Director, Steven Mercurio.

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Winning First Prize at the 2025 Kissinger Sommer Internationales Musikfestival's KlavierOlymp was a benchmark moment for Alon, especially since that distinguished competition individually selects and invites just six of the world's top young pianists to compete in Bad Kissingen, all of whom must have won prizes in other important competitions.

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Alon's many prizes and awards also include First Prize at the 2020 national “Piano Forever” competition in Israel, and First Prize at the 2022 young artist competition in Jerusalem. In 2023, he won Second Prize at the International James Mottram Piano Competition in Manchester (working with conductor Domingo Hindoyan). He won Third Prize at the International Piano Competition at New York City’s Kaufman Center. Between 2010 and 2016, Alon was awarded a yearly scholarship of distinction from the America Israel Cultural Foundation. He is a former member of the much-admired MultiPiano Ensemble, with whom he made two recordings for the Hyperion label.

 

Alon has recently recorded his debut solo album with the English Chamber Orchestra, performing pieces by Chopin and his student Carl Filtsch - to be released in the near future.

 

He has participated in many masterclasses with some of the world`s greatest artists and pedagogues including Murray Perahia, Sergei Babayan, Alexander Korsantia, Tatiana Zelikmann and Garrick Olssohn.

 

Born in 1999, he began his piano studies at the age of seven with Hanna Barzilay, continuing from the age of fifteen with Professor Tomer Lev at the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music, Tel Aviv University, where he recently completed his Bachelor’s degree and currently pursues his Master’s studies with Prof. Lev and Prof. Arie Vardi. From 2017 to 2019, Mr. Kariv studied at the Juilliard School in New York under the guidance of Yoheved Kaplinsky and Julian Martin.