Vladimir Svoysky
Concert Pianist / Harpsichordist / Conductor

Whether Vladimir Svoysky is seated at thepiano, at the harpsichord, or standing before an orchestra, baton in hand, his approach to music is pure passion — a passion born from the formative years he spent in his native Russia.

Born in Leningrad, Svoysky studied piano under the Russian great Berta Maranz. He toured Russia with the Gorky Philharmonic, and performed piano recitals throughout the country and on Russian television. After earning degrees in piano, organ and conducting from the Leningrad and Gorky conservatories, he accepted his government’s instructions to go to Siberia. His assignment? To build a symphony orchestra, literally from scratch. Svoysky traveled across the USSR to find the country’s top musicians and brought them together under the banner of the Krasnoyarsk Symphony Orchestra.

Svoysky led the orchestra as musical director for three years. Despite his success, the young Russian could not help chafing under the restrictive hold the government held over his musical life. “I felt my life as a musician was limited,” he recalls. “I could not travel outside the country.”  So in 1979 Vladimir Svoysky emigrated to the United States. American audiences have been the beneficiaries of his musical gifts ever since.

In the years since he first touched American soil, Svoysky has toured the country as a pianist, harpsichordist and conductor, created and played in several different chamber ensembles, earned master’s degrees in piano and conducting from the Peabody Conservatory, and garnered an impressive array of awards and accolades along the way.

Svoysky made his debut in London at St. Martin-in-the Fields in 1995. His New York debut at Carnegie Hall came in September 1996. The program included works by Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, and Beethoven, as well as the New York debut of Sonata No. 1 by contemporary Russian composer David Finko. “I have played it in many cities of the world,” Finko says. “My wife said, ‘Don’t be offended but Svoysky plays it better than you.’ And I agree.”

Reviewers across the country have praised Svoysky for his technical virtuosity, evocative interpretations, and, perhaps most important, the engaging warmth and emotional directness he brings to his music. “Vladimir Svoysky is no dry formalist,” says Peabody Opera Director Roger Brunyate. “He is romantic. He is passionate. He plays from a great heart.”

As a pianist, Vladimir Svoysky is as comfortable playing before a dozen listeners in a private home as he is before a large crowd at Carnegie Hall. He is a gregarious man who loves sharing his insights about music and composers, an inclination well suited to the intimate, salon-style performance. In a recent U.S. tour, he performed in venues large and small throughout the West Coast, Midwest, and the Mid-Atlantic.

“He has a barnstorming virtuoso technique in the familiar “take-no-prisoners” Soviet tradition. He easily commands many of the attributes that distinguish his school of playing: the huge, colorful sonority that never becomes forced or brittle; the penchant for heart-on-sleeve lyrical expressiveness, says a New York concert reviewer.

Svoysky’s repertoire is a rich one. He has dazzled audiences with his coherent, colorful handling of Chopin’s challenging “Etudes,” and has masterfully evoked the dark mood and Russian flavor of Rachmaninoff. His inspired performance of Beethoven’s Concerto #1, wrote one Russian Reviewer, “was so spontaneous and exciting that it seemed as if the young Beethoven was speaking to the audience.” And just recently as an echo, an American reviewer observed: “He is an artist who performs a variety of composers’ music as they would have performed it themselves.”

Svoysky was the founder and pianist of the chamber ensemble Rymland Quintet, which made its New York debut at the Brooklyn Conservatory in 1990, and won First Prize in the Columbia International Chamber Music Competition.

“In every field there are those who, by combing learning and effort with God-given talent, surmount the obstacles of life to reach such a high degree of excellence that they inspire others. Vladimir Svoysky is such a man.”

– St. Petersburg Times