Violina Petrychenko, Piano

Violina Petrychenko is from Ukraine. She was born into a family of musicians in Zaporizhia, where she started playing the piano at the age of 6.

She studied piano and musicology at the music high school in Zaporizhia , however her initial focus was more in the scientific area. In this context she took part in international conferences, but also in piano competitions.

At the age of 12 she participated in the International Prokofiev Competition, and at 16 her first theoretical paper was published. She was awarded both of her diplomas with distinction.

Violina began studying at the Nationalen Tschaikowsky- Musikakademie of Ukraine (Kyiv), majoring in piano. Since 2007 she continued her studies at the Hochschule für Musik Franz Lizt in Weimar and then and then continued to study piano at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln with Professor Jacob Leuschner.

Violina is now completing her studies in the class of Professor Evgueni Sinaiski at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen. She has also taken part in master classes with Peter Nagy, Ferenz Rados, Jeffry Swann, Evgeny Skovorodnikov, Bernd Götzke, Konrad Elser and Pierre-Laurent Aimard.

Violina has also received numerous awards, scholarships and prizes, including from the Gesellschaft der Freunde und Förderer der Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt in Weimar, the Neue Liszt Stiftung in Weimar, the Klassik Stiftung in Weimar, Anna-Ruths Stiftung in Cologne, the Werner Richard – Dr. Carl Dörken Stiftung and the Theodor-Rogler Stiftung.

She has been awarded the DAAD Prize for outstanding academic and artistic achievements, the Folkwang Prize in the field of music, a diploma in the Rosario Marciano Competition and the Audience Prize in the Medenus Competition.

The artist can look back on a very active concert career. Concert tours have taken her through Germany, Holland, France, Austria, Spain, the Czech Republic and Ukraine, and Violina has played several times for Deutschlandradio Kultur as well as for the radio and television stations MDR and WDR. She has performed at several festivals (including the Bayreuth Piano Festival, Euro Music Festival, Rösrath Piano Festival, Klangwelten (Bad Ahrweiler), Alt Kainacher Musiktage (Austria), Euregio Festival (Germany), Palermo Classica (Sicily). In 2016, the Museum für Lackkunst (BASF) in Münster presented Violina Petrychenko with her own concert series.

She also plays a large portion of her concerts as a chamber music partner and song accompanist. In 2011 she founded the Duo Kiol with the saxophonist Kirstin Niederstraßer. Violina Petrychenko plays in the chamber music ensembles Duo Adamé (clarinet, piano) and Trio Sérénade (clarinet, violin, piano).

In addition, she also focuses on historical keyboard instruments. This is expressed in numerous concerts (including the Stadtschloss and the Franz Liszt Wohnhaus in Weimar, and the Schlossmuseum in Sondershausen.

Violina positions itself in the tradition of Ukrainian culture and seeks to popularise it. So far she has recorded three CDs.

In 2014 her solo CD was released by ARS with piano works by A. Skrjabin and first recordings of the Ukrainian composer V. Kosenko. The CD received great critical acclaim and gave cause for further exploration of Ukrainian classical music: In November 2015 her CD “Ukrainian Moods” was released. Since 2016 she has been focusing on the work of Vasyl Barvinsky and sees her mission as making his name known again.

In 2017 the CD “The Silenced Voice of Vasyl Barvinsky” was released, the first recording of his piano works. On the occasion of his jubilee year 2018, Violina performed a series of concerts in Europe and Ukraine. She has played in the Nationalphilharmonie Lemberg, Nationalphilharmonie Khmelnytskyi, and the Nationalphilharmonie Ivano-Frankivsk, as well as the Czernowitzer Philharmonie and the National Oper in Lemberg. Some concerts were performed with the support of the Ukrainian consulates in Germany and France. Violina received official thanks from the Consulate General of Ukraine for popularizing Ukrainian culture and the music of Vasyl Barvinsky.

Besides her work as a concert pianist, Violina Petrychenko leads a private piano class in Cologne and is a jury member of the international piano competition for modern music “CONCOURS – FESTIVAL RÉPERTOIRE PIANISTIQUE MODERNE”.