A pianist of fiery temperament and virtuosity, Yulianna Avdeeva is the First Prize winner of the 2010 International Chopin Piano Competition, which launched her to international fame for “consistently [leading] the field, in terms of sheer passion and musicianship, not to mention technical security,” in performances that were “full of depth and colour” (The Telegraph). In 2022 the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette praised Avdeeva a “one-woman powerhouse of epic stature.”
After her sold-out recital debut at Carnegie Hall in early 2023, Avdeeva returns to Carnegie in October 2024 with a program of Chopin and Liszt, including the latter’s famous Piano Sonata in B Minor. She will also play that program on stages in Spain, Germany, France, Austria, Italy, and Seattle. In Boston she will perform Liszt and Beethoven’s Hammerklavier sonata; at Festival Lanaudiere she will perform Shostakovich’s 24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87, and, at the Rockport Chamber Music Festival, Shostakovich and Chopin.
In spring 2025, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the death of Dmitri Shostakovich, Avdeeva performs the composer’s 24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87, at Gewandhaus, in Leipzig, part of a Shostakovich festival with The Gewandhaus Orchestra in partnership with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. She will also play the cycle at Pierre Boulez Hall in Berlin, Palau de la Música in Barcelona and Madrid, in Ostrava, Czech Republic; and in Seon, Switzerland.
Chamber music highlights of Avdeeva’s 2024-25 season include Alfred Schnittke’s Quintet, with members of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, at the Salzburg Festival; Schnittke’s Concerto for Piano and Strings, and Concerto Grosso No. 6, with Gidon Kremer and Kremerata Baltica; and a trio tour with Julia Fischer and Daniel Müller-Schott at the Rheingau Music Festival, Kissinger Sommer, and London’s Wigmore Hall.
Avdeeva’s recent and upcoming orchestral highlights include Chopin’s Piano Concerto No.1 with the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century in Kyoto, Osaka, Tokyo, and Fukuoka, and with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra; Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra; Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra; Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 with the Pacific Symphony; Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini with The Florida Orchestra, and with Tokyo’s NHK Orchestra; Bernstein The Age of Anxiety with RAI Italian Radio Orchestra, and with the Minnesota Orchestra, Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra; and Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A minor with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia.
A recording artist, Avdeeva released the album Resilience in 2023, featuring music by Szpilman, Weinberg, Shostakovich, and Prokofiev — composers who endured in times of great political instability. Avdeeva’s latest album, Voyage, featuring the late works of Chopin, will be released in September 2024; a recording of Shostakovich’s Op. 87 follows in spring 2025 (all three on Pentatone). Her recordings of the Chopin concertos with the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century and Frans Brüggen (2013), her three solo albums featuring works by Bach, Mozart, Schubert, Chopin, Liszt, and Prokofiev (2014, 2016, 2017), and her collaboration with Gidon Kremer in Weinberg’s chamber music (2017 and 2019), are a formidable record of her art, topped off by a Deutsche Grammophon (2019) solo recording as part of a milestone collection dedicated to Chopin Competition Gold Medalists.
#YuliannasMusicalDialogues is an engaging online initiative that provides an open space for her followers and piano aficionados. Through regular informal social media posts, she opens up an online dialogue about a selected composer’s life and work, paying special attention to details of notable pieces, deconstructing the art of performance.
