Biography
Khrystyna Mykhailichenko is a young Ukrainian pianist who was born in Crimea. She began to play the piano when she was four. Within six years, she was winning international piano competitions and was performing in concerts throughout Europe and in the USA. The venues include Salle Cortot in Paris, Bozar Hall in Brussels, the Music Academies of Bruges, Antwerp, Krakow, Bremen, Gariunu concert hall in Vilnius, the University of Miami and Broward Centre for the Performing Arts, the World Bank in Washington DC, the UN residence in New York and all the National Philharmonics of Ukraine.
Her repertoire includes major piano concertos by Rachmaninov, Beethoven, Brahms, Liszt and a wide variety of solo recital’s programme. At the outbreak of war in February 2022, she fled to Poland with her mother and sister before settling in the North East of the UK in June. As well as continuing to travel extensively for performances, she studied at the Junior RNCM under Graham Scott. She won a full scholarship from the Royal Academy of Music in London and has started her undergraduate course there in September 2023 under professor Joanna MacGregor.
Jonathan Freeman-Attwood, the Royal Academy’s principal, said: “Khrystyna Mykhailichenko is an extraordinary talent of rare maturity for her age. She came and played the Chopin Ballade No 1 to me recently and revealed what a serious artist she is, almost as if the burdens of a hard life were being channelled through her playing. This was well beyond the carefree virtuosity one hears in this piece so often. It also had real grip and originality.”
