Anatol Ugorski


Anatol Ugorski is a classical pianist of Russian origin who lives in Germany.

Biography

Anatol Ugorski, born in a poor background, is the eldest of five children. As early as 1945, his parents moved to Leningrad. He was at first in a school where he sang and played the xylophone. From his six years, he succeeded the selection at the entrance to the school of music of Saint Petersburg Conservatory where he studied until 1960. He was subsequently admitted to the Conservatory of Leningrad in the piano class of Najda Gouloubovskaia with whom he worked until 1965. He was a student and attracted attention through the interpretation of avant-garde pieces: abandoning the repertoire traditionally devoted to Russian pianists, he played in the USSR some of the works of controversial Western composers such as Arnold Schönberg, Alban Berg, Olivier Messiaen and Pierre Boulez, assisted by his wife, musicologist Maja Elik.
In 1968, he won the third prize of the George Enescu International Piano Competition. During a tour of concerts in Leningrad by Pierre Boulez in autumn 1968, in a period of relative cultural openness, the enthusiastic applause of Ugorski were interpreted as a political manifestation - he worked with the conductor thirty years later. He was summoned by the Rectorate and considered with suspicion as politically unreliable, because of his passion for Western contemporary music and his origins. His career was stopped for more than ten years. He was confined to an accompanying post of the Young Pioneers choir, which could only performed in the Soviet bloc and for remote provincial schoolchildren, or private concerts, but always with full attendance.
Irene Dische comments: "In this perfect artistic freedom, he played only for himself." His solo concerts became very popular. Ugorski confided that his best Scarlatti concert he performed for children in the industrial city of Asbest. It was only in 1982, under the pressure of his artistic reputation, that he obtained a post of professor at the Leningrad Conservatory.
Until then, there was no question of emigrating, but in the spring of 1990, Dina Ugorskaja, then in her sixteenth year - and also a pianist and pupil of the Conservatory - suffered antisemitic harassment and felt threatened. The Ugorski escaped without preparation, nor papers for East Berlin. The family lived in a refugee camp for several months. He recorded his first album in 1991 with the Diabelli Variations for Deutsche Grammophon, with which he signed an exclusive contract.
His international career was launched in 1992, he was fifty years old and soon to be naturalized. His first spectacular concerts took place in the Milan Conservatory and the Vienna Festival. He performed as soloist or with orchestras such as the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne, the Czech Philharmonic, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Orchestre de Paris and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and regularly participates in the most important festivals in the world.
Until 2007, Ugorski was a piano teacher at the Hochschule für Musik Detmold, where he lived. He was also a member of the jury of the ARD International Music Competition in Munich.

Recordings

Ugorski published numerous piano records from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Among his most important recordings are Catalogue d'oiseaux by Olivier Messiaen and the Piano Concerto in F-sharp minor, Op. 20 by Scriabin with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra directed by Pierre Boulez. For this recording, Ugorski was nominated for a Grammy Award in February 2000. He and his daughter Dina Ugorskaja recorded the concertos for two pianos by Bach, Mozart and Shostakovich. In 2010, he played the complete sonatas of Scriabin for Cavi-music. He also recorded the Piano Quintet by Shostakovich, for Oehms Classics.
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