Kateryna Titova

“She is a revolutionary with a brilliant technique, someone who goes against the grain, no punk of the classical scene but not entirely refined either, an artist who tells stories with her hands,” MDR declared when Kateryna Titova’s debut recording of works by Rachmaninoff was released by Sony Classical in 2009.

A native of the Ukraine, Kateryna Titova has won first or second prizes at twenty international piano competitions, notably the 2002 Alicia de Larrocha Competition in Andorra, the 2004 International Russian Music Piano Competition in San José, California, the 2005 Anton G. Rubinstein Piano Competition in Dresden, the 2008 James Mottram International Piano Competition in Manchester and the 2013 Spanish Composers International Piano Competition in Madrid.

Kateryna Titova was five when she began to play the piano. She attended the Kharkov Special Music School in the Ukraine before transferring to the Tchaikovsky Central Music School in Moscow. By 2001 she had moved to Germany to further her studies, initially with Michael Keller at the Münster Academy of Music, then with Arkadi Zenzipér at the Carl Maria von Weber Academy of Music in Dresden. She received an International Artist Diploma from the Royal Northern College of Music, where her supervisor was Norma Fisher, and also studied with Boris Petrushansky at the Imola Piano Academy in Italy. Her development as an artist has been influenced in no small way by Igor Blagodatov, a pupil of Jacob Milstein and one of the leading exponents of the tradition enshrined in the Russian piano school.

Both as a soloist and as a chamber recitalist Kateryna Titova has performed throughout Europe, Russia, the Ukraine and the United States of America with orchestras that have included the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra, the Moscow Symphony Orchestra, the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, the Philharmonie der Nationen and – under the direction of Maxim Vengerov – the Prague Philharmonic. Recitals have taken her to the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival, the Bad Kissingen Summer Festival, the International Music Festival in Viana do Castello in Portugal, the Dresden State Opera, the Laeiszhalle in Hamburg, the Vienna Konzerthaus, Lesinsky Hall in Zagreb and Bridgewater Hall in Manchester. Her recording of chamber works with the oboist Ramon Ortega Quéro was released on the GENUIN label in 2012.

Kateryna Titova is the recipient of scholarships from the Vladimir Spivakov Foundation in Moscow, the Oskar and Vera Ritter Foundation, the Lutz-E. Adolf Foundation and the GWK in Münster, Northrhine-Westphalia, whose Young Artist Award she received in 2002. She has also received support from Rotary International and, in 2016/17, from the Funk Foundation.