When in 2015 Australia's classical music and arts magazine Limelight asked 100 of today's best pianists to name the ten greatest pianists of all time, Odessa-born Emil Gilels ranked fifth behind Arthur Rubinstein, Sviatoslav Richter and Vladimir Horowitz with Sergei Rachmaninov in first place. French pianist Cédric Tiberghien called Gilels' recording of Brahms's 'Second Concerto' with the Berlin Philharmonic "one of the most beautiful recordings ever made of a piano concerto" and said: "The quality of tone and line, the inspiration and the beauty of the sound - everything is so perfect." Gilels became in 1955 the first musician from the Soviet Union to perform in the United States since Sergei Prokofiev in 1921. He opened the door for many to follow and he performed around the world until his death in 1985 leaving a vast library of notable recordings.
Born in Odessa on the Black Sea in what is now Ukraine, he studied the piano from the age of six, performed publicly at age nine and made his concert debut at 13. Study at the conservatories in Odessa and Moscow led to a top prize in Brussels but the outbreak of World War II denied him a chance to perform at the New York World's Fair in 1939. His membership of the Communist Party in the Stalin era sometimes caused controversy when he started visiting the US regularly in the 1960s but his reputation as a pianist flourished. German and Austrian composers were central to his repertoire but he also made well-regarded recordings of composers such as Debussy, Liszt, Prokofiev and Rachmaninov. He earned his first Grammy Award in 1958 for Best Classical Instrumental Performance for 'Brahms: Piano Concerto #2' and he received four more nominations in that category for 'Gilels at Carnegie Hall' (1969), 'Brahms: Concerto No. 1 in D Minor for Piano and Orchestra and Concerto No. 2 in B Flat Major for Piano and Orchestra' (1973), 'Beethoven: Sonata for Piano No. 15 in D Major, Op. 28 (Pastoral) and No. 3 in C Major, Op. 2, No. 3' (1983) and 'Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 29 in B Flat, Op. 106 Hammerklavier' (1984). A nine-disc collection titled 'Icon: Emil Gilels' was released in 2010 followed by the 24-disc 'Emil Gilels: The Complete Recordings On Deutsch Grammophon' in 2015 and the seven-disc 'Emil Gilels - The Complete RCA and Columbia Album Collection' the year after. A 2016 release, 'The Seattle Recital: Beethoven - Chopin - Debussy - Prokofiev', went to number 17 on Billboard's Classical Albums Chart. Gilels had a heart attack in 1981 and his health declined until he died four years later in Moscow aged 68. In its obituary, the New York Times noted that Gilels was "a big, rich-toned pianist who could ride triumphantly over an orchestra in the mainstream Romantic piano concertos" but "unlike some powerhouse virtuosos, he had a poetic gift that enlivened slow movements".