Biography
Olga Stezhko is an award-winning concert pianist and critically acclaimed recording artist. Her striking and idiosyncratic programmes often explore hidden connections between music, science, and history across the past four centuries.
Acclaimed by Classical Source in a Wigmore Hall review as ‘a supremely delicate master of her instrument’ who possesses ‘an extraordinary presence’, Olga has performed worldwide from the Barbican Hall in London to Salle Cortot in Paris to the Carnegie Hall in New York City.
Recent highlights include performances in Bridgewater Hall, Wigmore Hall, the Palermo Classica Festival, the Ulverston International Music Festival and a tour in Norway where Olga premiered her multimedia project ‘Red, Green, Blue’ and a new work for piano, chamber orchestra and narrator ‘Blooming’ by Kari Beate Tandberg, based on the book ‘The Unwomanly Face of War’ by Belarusian Nobel Prize laureate Svetlana Alexievich.
Olga is the winner of many international competitions and awards including the Grand Prix at the ‘Halina Czerny-Stefanska In Memoriam’ International Piano Competition in Poland and the First Prize at the Nikolai Rubinstein International Piano Competition in France.
Born in Minsk, Olga was educated in Belarus, Italy and the UK where she completed her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees with distinction at the Royal Academy of Music.
Olga’s debut album ‘Eta Carinae’ (Luminum Records) combined her passion for astronomy with music by Scriabin and Busoni and was hailed by the Gramophone Magazine as ‘an outstanding debut’ and ‘not a record for the faint-hearted but rather for those who enjoy dark and menacing regions of the mind’. Her second all-Debussy album ‘Et la lune descend’ (Palermo Classica) received unanimous critical acclaim in the publications including International Piano Magazine and BBC Music Magazine.
Helen and Olga are members of the Marsyas Trio (flute, cello, piano) – one of the UK’s foremost mixed chamber ensembles and the current Artist By-Fellows at Churchill College, University of Cambridge and FUAM Ensemble in Residence at the University of Leeds.
