#426 - Olga Scheps

Update: 2022-02-25

Description

See All Episodes

</figure>

Become a Patron!

Olga Scheps was born in Moscow in 1986, the daughter of two pianists, and discovered the instrument for herself at the age of four. She began studying the piano more intensively after her family moved to Germany in 1992. At an early age she had already developed her own unique style of keyboard playing, which combines intense emotiveness and powerful expressivity with extraordinary pianistic technique. Among those who discovered these talents was Alfred Brendel, who has encouraged the young pianist. A holder of scholarships from the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben and Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes, she completed her studies with Professor Pavel Gililov in her adopted home of Cologne in 2013, passing her Concert Examination with Distinction. She rounded out her training with Professor Arie Vardi and Professor Dmitri Bashkirov.

Besides the well-known works for piano Olga Scheps’s repertory consists of compositions that are seldom heard in the concert hall, including the posthumous Études of Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt’s Malédiction, Olivier Messiaen’s Les Oiseaux exotiques, Antonín Dvořák’s Piano Concerto, Arvo Pärt’s „Lamentate“, and Mieczysław Weinberg’s Piano Quintet. Her solo recitals are as popular with audiences all over the world as her acclaimed appearances as soloist with orchestra and her chamber projects.

Such noted conductors as Thomas Dausgaard, Lorin Maazel, José Serebrier, Marcus Bosch, Ralf Weikert, Michel Tabachnik, Antoni Wit, Ivor Bolton, Cristian Mandeal, Christoph Altstaedt, Tugan Sokhiev, Simone Young, Markus Poschner and Pablo Heras-Casado have invited Olga Scheps to collaborate with them.

Among the leading orchestras with which she has appeared in concert are the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo, the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, the Mozarteum Orchester Salzburg, the Munich Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the State Symphony Cappella of Russia (Moscow), the Staatskapelle Weimar, the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, the NDR Radiophilharmonie, the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, the Prague Philharmonia, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and the New Japan Philharmonic Orchestra.

Olga Scheps now performs with great success in world-famous concert halls such as the Elbphilharmonie, the Berlin and Cologne Philharmonie, the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Cadogan Hall London, the Zurich Tonhalle, and the Suntory Hall Tokyo. She is a sought-after guest at festivals like the Rheingau Musik Festival, Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Kissinger Sommer, Heidelberger Frühling, Klavier-Festival Ruhr, Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, MDR Musiksommer, Lucerne Festival am Piano, ACHTBRÜCKEN Festival in Cologne, Mozart Festival Würzburg, Mersin Festival in Turkey, and Menuhin Festival Gstaad.

A passionate chamber musician, she plays regularly with such artists as Alban Gerhardt, Daniel Hope, Adrian Brendel, Jan Vogler, Nils Mönkemeyer, the Danish String Quartet, the Danel Quartet and the Kuss Quartet, with which she recorded Mieczysław Weinberg’s Piano Quintet.

Since 2009 Olga Scheps has been an exclusive Sony Classical artist. Her debut album ‘Chopin’ immediately won an ECHO Klassik award. The two recordings that followed, ‘Russian Album’ (2010) and ‘Schubert’ (2012), were also highly praised by the press. Her fourth Sony Classical CD was released early in 2014 and features Chopin’s Piano Concertos nos. 1 and 2 with the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra. The success of her solo-album ‘Vocalise’, published in 2015, was surpassed by her latest album ‘Satie’ which Olga Scheps has recorded on the occasion of the French composer’s 150th birthday: It reached top 1 of the German classical music charts at first go. Her CD "Tchaikovsky" was released in October 2017 and she broke new ground with the album "100 % Scooter - Piano Only", on which she recorded arrangements of the most famous Scooter hits by Sven Helbig. In March 2019 Olga Scheps’ album “Melody” was released, containing pieces spanning four centuries, from Bach to Aphex Twin. Her recording of the Weinberg Piano Quintet with the Kuss Quartet was released in late 2019. Olga Scheps is a Steinway Artist.