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The Russian-born American pianist, Julia Zilberquit, was born into a family of musicians and began to play the piano at the age of four. She graduated from Moscow's Gnesin School of Music and immigrated with her family to the USA in 1989. She has received her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from The Juilliard School where she was a scholarship student of Bella Davidovich.
Julia Zilberquit has earned critical acclaim as a recitalist, orchestral soloist, chamber musician and recording artist. As the first prize winner of the 1994 Vienna International Music Competition, which launched her career, she performed as the soloist with the Wiener Kammerorchester at the Vienna Konzerthaus and Linz Bruckner Haus. She has also appeared with the Sinfonia Varsovia Orchestra under the baton of Sir Yehudi Menuhin in L.v. Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 at the prestigious Beethoven Festival in Vienna, and gave solo recitals at Vienna's Schoenbrunn Palace and the Boesendorfer Hall where her success resulted in return engagements. Her arrangement of Dmitri Shostakovich's Concertino in A minor, Op. 94, originally scored for two pianos, into a one-movement concerto for piano and chamber orchestra brought her international recognition and received enthusiastic reviews from all over the world. It was premiered at the 1996 International Music Festival in Seattle with the New European Strings Orchestra under Dmitry Sitkovetsky. She received high praise for her debut with the Deutsche Symphony Orchestra at the Philharmonic Hall in Berlin performing Schumann's Piano Concerto in A minor where the Tagesspiegel called her "the romantic poetess of the piano."
Julia Zilberquit made her orchestral debut at Carnegie Hall performing D. Shostakovich's Concertino in A minor with the Moscow Virtuosi under Vladimir Spivakov, the first stop of an extensive tour through the USA, Canada and Israel, with performances at major halls in Seattle, Los Angeles, New York, Toronto, Jerusalem, Tel-Aviv and Haifa. She made her Tchaikovsky Hall debut in 1998 in Moscow with Constantine Orbelian and the Moscow Chamber Orchestra in the world premiere of Sergei Slonimsky's Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, a work was commissioned by and dedicated to Zilberquit.
Julia Zilberquit has performed with The Brooklyn Philharmonic, Wiener Kammerorchester, the London-based New European Strings Orchestra, Deutsche Symphony Orchestra, Moscow Soloists, Cairo Symphony Orchestra, Moscow Virtuosi, Russian State Orchestra, Bolshoi Orchestra, Musica Viva Chamber Orchestra, Moscow, St. Petersburg Camerata, Capella Symphony of St. Petersburg, Russian Philharmonia, Moscow Chamber Orchestra, Sinfonietta Cracovia and the Sinfonia Varsovia. In the summer of 2003 she appeared in New York performing Bach's D-minor Concerto with the Moscow Soloists under Yuri Bashmet.
As recitalist, Julia Zilberquit has appeared as soloist at the world's major halls including New York's Weill Recital Hall (at Carnegie Hall), Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center and Merkin Concert Hall. She has participated at major international music festivals such as the Seattle International Music Festival; Beethoven Festival, Vienna; International Music Festival Klangbogen, Vienna; International Music Festival, Colmar, France; Valery Gergiev's Stars of White Nights in St. Peterburg; Sviatoslav Richter's December Nights in Moscow; The Palaces of St. Petersburg festival; and the Penderecki Festival, of Krakow, Poland.
The Los Angeles Times called her "a forceful and rhapsodic soloist," and the Seattle Times has praised her as "a dynamic young pianist with a big technique and an innate sense of musical drama." The Washington Post described her appearance a "superb performance." Her Recent engagements include a return to Moscow in May 2004, when she performed L.v. Beethoven's early Piano Concerto in E-flat major, WoO. 4 with Yuri Bashmet and "Young Russia" Orchestra.
Julia Zilberquit's latest CD, launched in September 2003, features all of Bach's solo keyboard concertos as well as her own orchestrations of two J.S. Bach-Antonio Vivaldi Concerti Grossi. Her other recordings include a CD titled Jewish Music from Russia, featuring works by Prokofiev, D. Shostakovich and Slonimsky on the Harmonia Mundi/Le Chant du Monde label, and the recording of the D. Shostakovich's Concertino with the Moscow Virtuosi and Vladimir Spivakov on the MusicMasters Classics/BMG label. The New York Times has praised Zilberquit's recordings on numerous occasions. She has been the featured artist on WQXR in NewYork, RadioFrance in Paris and DeutschlandRadio in Berlin.
Julia Zilberquit now lives in New York City with her husband and and two children. |
