Nadejda Vlaeva

Pianist Nadejda Vlaeva is a Liszt specialist who has performed across Europe and the U.S. Her talent has been acclaimed not only by her teacher Lazar Berman but outside the piano sphere, including by Liszt biographer Alan Walker. Vlaeva was born in Sofia, Bulgaria, where she took up the piano at age five. She studied at first in Bulgaria with Anton Dikov, and she has maintained links with the Bulgarian music scene, working closely with composer Dimiter Christoff to present his music in broadcasts. Vlaeva later attended the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam and the Manhattan School of Music, working with Jan Wijn, Ruth Laredo, and Lazar Berman, a Liszt specialist whom she considers her mentor. She was winning major prizes by her teens, including one at a Liszt competition in Lucca, Italy, when she was 15; she also took a prize for best interpretation of Brahms at the Franz Liszt Competition in Weimar, Germany. Vlaeva's concerto credits include appearances with the Budapest Symphony Orchestra, the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Capella Istropolitana in Slovakia. She has appeared widely as a recitalist in Europe and North America, including at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, and she is partly based in New York. Vlaeva is the dedicatee of two works by composer Lowell Liebermann, the Nocturne No. 9 and the Variations on a Theme of Schubert. Vlaeva made her recording debut with a pair of albums devoted to Christoff's music in the mid-1990s, and she recorded in the 2000s decade for Musicians Showcase and Gega in Bulgaria. An MSR Classics release, Piano Music of Liszt, earned a Grand Prix du Disque award in France. She was then signed to the Hyperion label and released an album of Bach transcriptions in 2011. Vlaeva returned in 2016 with an album of music by Sergei Bortkiewicz and again in 2021 with a release devoted to composer Pancho Vladigerov.
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