Olga Pashchenko © Melle Meivogel
Olga Pashchenko
OLGA PASHCHENKO
Organ • Harpsichord • (Forte) Piano
‘How would Beethoven sound if you threw a molotov cocktail between the keys? It’s the inflammable temperament that distinguishes herself from the regular fortepiano player.’ - de Volkskrant
Olga Pashchenko is one of today’s most versatile keyboard performers on the international stage. Equally at home on organ, harpsichord, forte and contemporary piano, she exudes a dynamic and passionate virtuosity through her colourful and highly sensitive performances of works ranging from baroque to contemporary.
From Bach and Beethoven on historical instruments to Ligeti on contemporary piano, Olga Pashchenko enjoys a busy and eclectic concert career as a soloist, recitalist and chamber musician. She is a regular guest at early and contemporary music festivals alike, including the Utrecht Early Music Festival where she was Artist in Residence in 2016, the Radio France Festival in Montpellier, the Festival Musiq’3 in Brussels, the fortepiano festivals of Amsterdam, the Maggio Musicale Florence and fortepiano series of Milan and Padua, AMUZ Antwerp, Concertgebouw Bruges and the Cité de la Musique in Paris where she made her debut in 2016. As a concerto soloist, Olga has performed with the Orchestra of the 18th Century, musicAeterna with Teodor Currentzis, Meininger Hofkapelle, the Amsterdam Sinfonietta and with Alexei Lubimov and Collegium 1704 under Vaclav Luks at the Chopin Festival, Warsaw and at the RSO Festival, Helsinki with the Finnish Baroque Orchestra. Her chamber music partners include Alexander Melnikov, Evgeny Sviridov, Dmitry Sinkovsky and Erik Bosgraaf.
Olga Pashchenko has been Hausmusikerin at the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn since 2012, where she gives regular recitals in the series Bongasse 20: music from Beethoven’s time.
Upcoming highlights include recitals with Georg Nigl at the Heidelberg Frühling and Salzburg Festival, a duo concert in Antwerp with Alexander Melnikov, a solo recital at the Moscow Philharmonic amongst others. Olga has an ongoing partnership with musician Jed Wentz with whom she collaborates on a special cinematic project, performing an array of new arrangements of romantic music to accompany a selection of silent films from the 1920s such as Tartuffe and Faust by F.W. Murnau and La glace à trois faces by Epstein.
An exclusive recording artist for Alpha Classics, Olga Pashchenko has released several critically acclaimed recordings including Transistions – a mixed recital programme of works by Dussek, Beethoven and Mendelssohn, an album of Beethoven Sonatas and most recently, an album of Dussek Concertos with Alexei Lubimov and the Finnish Baroque Orchestra as well as her performance of Debussy’s own arrangement of La Mer for piano four hands with Alexander Melnikov on Harmonia Mundi.
Olga Pashchenko was born in Moscow in 1986 and began her musical studies at the age of 6 at the Gnessin School of Music with Tatiana Zelikman, giving her first piano recital in New York at the age of 9. She continued her studies at the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory studying forte and modern piano with Alexei Lubimov, harpsichord with Olga Martynova and organ with Alexei Schmitov before finishing her studies at the Conservatory of Amsterdam with Richard Egarr in 2014.
In 2017, she was appointed as a Professor at the Sweelinck Conservatorium van Amsterdam and Royal Conservatory of Ghent.
As of July 2019