For the second concert of the 2015-2016 season on Thursday, Nov. 12, at 8 p.m. at Tryon Fine Arts Center the Tryon Concert Association will present pianist Peter Roesel.

Roesel began playing piano at age six and later spent six years at the Moscow Conservatory, a premiere pianistic training ground. Over his career he has received awards in numerous international competitions and has performed with major symphony orchestras throughout the world. In addition to concertizing Roesel has made numerous outstanding recordings, particularly of German and Russian romantic composers.

His name may be less well known than some in his profession, which is largely due to circumstances of his birth. He was born on Feb. 2, 1945, in Dresden, Germany, and his country soon fell behind the Iron Curtain in East Germany. Thus his visibility remained low during the Communist era in his land.

Music critic Stephen Wigler described Peter Roesel as “the best pianist nobody’s ever heard of – including people who ought to know.” Wigler goes on to say, “The German-born, Russian-trained pianist is certainly the greatest pianist Germany has produced since the end of the World War II. … a superb interpreter of the Austro-Germanic classics …. the only German who plays the Russian repertory as if it were in his bones – with passion and brilliance ….”

It is the conductors of the world who best know his abilities. Kurt Masur engaged Roesel five times with the New York Philharmonic. Kurt Sanderling invited him to perform all five Beethoven concertos in a single week with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. In 1999 he was the soloist at the season-opening concert of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra conducted by Gunther Herbig, playing Prokofiev’s Second Concerto.