Viviana Sofronitsky

Viviana Sofronitsky specializes in the fortepiano and is one of the few major players of that instrument to have emerged from the former Soviet Union. Now a Canadian citizen, she has made several pioneering recordings on historical pianos. Sofronitsky was born in Moscow in 1960. Her father was pianist Vladimir Sofronitsky, and he gave Viviana her first lessons. Showing promise, she was enrolled at the Moscow Central Music School and went on to the Moscow Conservatory, where she continued on through a doctoral degree. At that time, Sofronitsky was a traditional pianist, touring in major Soviet cities, but she was already interested in the fortepiano, which was a rare instrument in the Soviet Union at the time. She worked with early music pioneer Alexei Lubimov in the ensembles Madrigal and the Chamber Music Academy, and in 1989, she moved to the U.S., taking classes in early music at the Oberlin Conservatory. Sofronitsky moved to Canada the following year and pursued collaborations with members of Toronto's Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra. She became a Canadian citizen in 1994. Sofronitsky continued her studies at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, Netherlands, earning degrees there in fortepiano, harpsichord, and early music performance in 1999. That year, she made her recording debut on fortepiano, backing mandolinist Richard Walz on the album Works for Mandolin and Piano. Since 2001, Sofronitsky has lived in the Czech Republic with her husband, instrument builder Paul McNulty. She often performs on his copies of early keyboard instruments and has amassed a collection of them herself. Sofronitsky is a frequent guest at European early music festivals, often giving master classes as well as performing at such events at the Utrecht Oude Muziek Festival in the Netherlands, the Berliner Tage für alte Musik in Germany, and the Chopin Festival in Warsaw, Poland. She has extended her repertory forward into the Romantic era and, in 2017, became the first person to perform on a copy of Chopin's own piano. A highlight of Sofronitsky's recording career was her cycle of Mozart's piano concertos, recorded in 2008 on fortepiano with the Musicae Antiquae Collegium Varsoviense in Warsaw. That album appeared on the Pro Musica Camerata label, and she has released albums on that label, Brilliant Classics, CAvi-music, and others. In 2022, she moved to Challenge Classics, backing viola da gamba player Sergei Istomin on a recording of Bach's sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord; unusually for that repertory, she played a fortepiano, a McNulty copy of a Gottfried Silbermann instrument.
© James Manheim /TiVo