Thursday 30th March 2023 at 7.30pm in Crown Church
The outstanding Kazakh pianist Oxana Shevchenko made her first visit to Inverness in 2012 as one date in a tour of selected Scottish music clubs following her success in winning First Prize in the 2010 Scottish International Piano Competition. Her performance in Glasgow featured Ravel’s La Valse and the Second Piano concerto by Sergei Prokofiev. It was summed up by Michael Tumelty in The Herald,
“Shevchenko was next with Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto. She has been, frankly, gobsmacking since the start, and was absolutely consistent in her delivery of the Prokofiev: total power, complete clarity of articulation and a phenomenal level of musicianship that is already world class.”
The list of prestigious prizes that Oxana has won in international competitions is almost endless, but one stands out that emphasises her versatility, not just as a soloist and chamber musician, but as an accompanist. In 2011 Oxana won the Best Accompanist Prize in the Tchaikovsky International Competition in Moscow performing with the overall winner of the competition, the Armenian cellist Narek Hakhnazaryan
At the time of that Scottish tour Oxana was studying for her Masters degree with Dmitry Alexeev at the Royal College of Music in London. The morning after her Inverness concert her phone rang. It was the RCM asking where she was and to say that she had been chosen to represent the RCM in the 2012 Sheepgrove Inter-Collegiate Competition in Newbury, Berkshire the following Monday. The next question was to ask what she was doing on 27th February 2013. “Mr Ashkenazy wants you to play Prokofiev’s Second Concerto with him.”
There followed a train from Inverness to Glasgow, a concert for Milngavie Music Club on the Friday, Glasgow Arts Club on the Saturday, Oban Music Society on the Sunday, a dash by public transport to Newbury where she won the Sheepgrove for the RCM and then a dash back to play in Campbelltown on the Tuesday.
In the summer of 2013 Oxana moved from London to Geneva to complete her Masters with Jean-François Antonioli at the Haute Ecole de Musique in Lausanne as well as attending the Corsi di Perfezionamento with Benedetto Lupo at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome.
After a few years touring the world, winning competition prizes and giving concerts, including in Sydney Opera House, Oxana and her now husband Alexey Osipov settled in St Petersburg, Russia where Alexey was selected to join the First Violins of the famous St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra. Some touring continued of which a highlight was the two of them playing to a packed audience in Inverness Town House on 12th August 2019. Then in February 2022 came Putin’s War and, like so many other Russian musicians and artists, Oxana and Alexey were very concerned that some casual comment would be reported to the authorities with terrifying consequences. With their two small children they managed to reach and cross the border into Turkey. From there, during 2022 they travelled around Europe until, in October, they settled in Haifa, Israel where Alexey has been appointed Associate Concertmaster of the Haifa Symphony Orchestra.
Those of you who were able to be at that Town House recital in August 2019 will remember that Oxana and Alexey played a full length programme and then Oxana threw in the exhausting Liszt Piano Sonata in B minor as an encore. musicinverness is honoured to be welcoming Oxana back for a fourth visit to entertain the Inverness audience.
Programme:
Mozart – Sonata no 18 in D major
Schubert — Hungarian melody
Brahms — Piano Sonata no 1 in C major, op 1
Intermission
Prokofiev — 6 pieces from the suite “Romeo and Juliet”:
– The Street Awakens
– Juliet as a Young Girl
– Montagues and Capulets
– Mercutio
– Dance of the Girls with Lilies
– Romeo and Juliet before Parting
Stravinsky — 5 doigts’
Stravinsky — Piano rag music
Gershwin — 3 preludes
musicinverness 