Featured Artists
Olga Andryushchenko
Olga Andryushchenko was educated at the Central Special Music School, and the Faculty of Historical and Modern Performing Arts of the Moscow Tchaikovsky State Conservatory under Alexei Lubimov. She also studied organ. She completed her postgraduate studies at the same conservatory, and was also a DAAD scholarship-holder at the Cologne Hochschule für Musik.
She has won a number of important prizes and awards, including the 4th International Piano Competition “Franz Schubert and the Music of Modernity” in Austria (2000), the Premium Piano Seiler 2nd International Piano Competition in Germany (2001), the Premio Vanna Spadafor International Piano Competition in Italy (2004), the Bach Competition in Leipzig (2006), the Musica Antiqua International Fortepiano Competition in Belgium (2007), the A. Scriabine International Piano Competition in Paris (2008), the N. Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Paris (2008), and the Fortepiano Competition in Schloss Kremsegg (2011).
She was a soloist of the Moscow State Philharmonic Society (2002–2004), and performs both as a soloist and in ensembles, playing piano, organ, fortepiano or harpsichord. She has also given a number of piano recitals and played with many orchestras worldwide. Olga has recorded extensively for radio and now lives in Germany.
Giorgio Koukl
Giorgio Koukl is a pianist/harpsichordist and composer. He was born in Prague in 1953 and studied there at the State Music School and Conservatory. He continued his studies at both the Conservatories of Zürich and Milan, where he took part in the masterclasses of Nikita Magaloff, Jacques Février and Stanislas Neuhaus, and with Rudolf Firkušný, friend and advocate of Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů. It was through Firkušný that Koukl first encountered Martinů‘s music, prompting him to search out his compatriot’s solo piano works. Since then he has developed these into an important part of his concert repertoire and is now considered one of the world’s leading interpreters of Martinů‘s piano music, having recorded that composer’s complete solo piano music, together with five discs of Martinů‘s vocal music and two discs of his piano concertos. As a logical continuation of this work, Koukl has recorded the complete solo piano works of Paul Le Flem, Alexander Tcherepnin, Arthur Lourié, Vítězslava Kaprálová, Witold Lutosławski, and, more recently, Alexandre Tansman, Tibor Harsányi and Alfons Szczerbiński.
Paul Stewart
Canadian pianist Paul Stewart launched his career in 1981 with a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, with the Toronto Symphony. Since then he has appeared frequently in concert throughout Canada, the USA (including Carnegie Hall, New York and the Kennedy Center, Washington), Mexico, South America, the United Kingdom, Europe, South Africa and Asia. He is often invited as guest-soloist with major orchestras in Canada and abroad, and has collaborated with such artists as James Ehnes, Maureen Forrester, Ben Heppner, Jessye Norman, Mstislav Rostropovich, Pinchas Zukerman, and the Leipzig, Prague and Moscow String Quartets.
In 1995, his British début at Wigmore Hall, London was broadcast by the BBC, and a performance of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 4 with the Moscow State Radio Orchestra was broadcast throughout Russia and subsequently released on a bestselling CD. Other recordings include works by Beethoven, Britten, Honegger, Liszt, Prokofiev, Ravel, Schubert and Strauss.
For Grand Piano he is currently recording the complete piano sonatas of Nikolay Medtner, a composer he has championed and performed on four continents.
Paul Stewart has been a Professor of Piano at the Université de Montréal, Canada since 2002.
Olga Solovieva
Olga Solovieva was born in Moscow where she graduated from the Russian Academy of Music and became an assistant to Leonid Blok. Since 2004 she has been a professor at the Gnessin State Musical College and has given masterclasses in Ireland and Belgium.
A laureate of several international competitions, in May 2019 she received the Glinka Medal for her contribution to musical art. She has performed in Russia and internationally and collaborated with musicians and ensembles including the Vanbrugh Quartet, Vilnius String Quartet, Christopher Marwood, Roel Dieltiens, Haik Kazazyan, Fanny Clamagirand, Julian Bliss and Sergey Kostylev, among others.
She has recorded two albums for Grand Piano, including Stanchinsky’s Complete Piano Works, Vol. 1 (GP766). For Naxos she has recorded piano music by Taneyev (8.557804) and Boris Tchaikovsky (8.557727, 8.573207, 8.573783), and is heard alongside her compatriot Dmitrii Khrychev on the album 19th Century Russian Cello Music (8.573951).
