Igor Lovchinsky
Born in Kazan, Russia (Tatarstan) in 1984, Igor Lovchinsky began playing the piano at age two, and by age four, he was performing recitals for his family and friends. A year later he entered the Kazan Special Music School for Gifted Children.
His family moved to Columbus, Ohio, when he was ten, and he continued his piano study with Nina Polonsky and Steven Glaser. He then went on to garner first prizes in the Eastman International Piano Competition (2002) and the National Chopin Piano Competition of the Kosciuszko Foundation (2003). Mr. Lovchinsky received his undergraduate degree from the Juilliard School, where he studied with Jerome Lowenthal, and completed his Master’s Degree at the New England Conservatory, where his teachers were Patricia Zander and Wha-Kyung Byun.
His career has already included performances at the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Auditorium, Hartford’s Bushnell Center, Rochester’s Eastman Theater, the Ohio Theater, and the New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall.
Foreign tours have included recitals in Poland, at the American Embassy in Beijing, and at the Rosza Center in Calgary, Alberta. Last June, he returned to Warsaw, for a recital at the Chopin Memorial and another at Chopin’s birthplace in nearby Zelazowa Wola. In July, he was a faculty member during the New Musical Generation Festival at the National School of Music and Arts in Vilnius, Lithuania. This spring, he performs in Minneapolis, New England, New York City, and Long Island, and in October, he will present a program in the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert Series in Chicago.
Igor Lovchinsky has championed works by contemporary composers, including the late virtuoso performer Earl Wild, who upon hearing the young pianist perform his Etudes on Themes of Gershwin, offered to produce his debut disc on Wild’s Ivory Classics label. Released in 2008, this CD was voted one of the top five classical recordings of that year by Time Out International. Gramophone magazine hailed him as a “star of the future” and Germany’s Piano Magazine remarked on the “elegance and rapturous beauty” of his performances.