Olga Kern - Piano

Photo Credit: Fernando Baez

With her performance of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 at the 11th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2001, Olga Kern won the Gold Medal and became the first woman to achieve this distinction in over 30 years.  Olga’s second triumph came in New York City on May 4, 2004, with a highly acclaimed New York City recital debut at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall.  Eleven days later, on May 12, 2004, in an unprecedented turn of events Olga Kern gave a recital in Isaac Stern Auditorium at the invitation of Carnegie Hall.

With her vivid stage presence, passionately confident musicianship and extraordinary technique, the striking young Russian pianist Olga Kern has continued to captivate fans and critics alike. Across the United States, in each season, she is in demand for re-engagements and new appearances, and is quickly being recognized world-wide.

After a critically acclaimed 35 city tour of the US in spring, 2007 with the National Philharmonic Orchestra and Vladimir Spivakov, Ms. Kern opens the 2007-2008 season as guest soloist with the Colorado Symphony, to be followed by appearances with the Nashville Symphony and her debut with the Vancouver Symphony. Miss Kern will present the Inaugural Concert of the Southeastern Piano Festival in Columbia, South Carolina as well as recitals in Santa Fe, New Mexico and in Sanibel and Palm Beach, Florida.  In May of 2008 Olga Kern will tour North America with Maestro Vladimir Spivakov and the world renowned Moscow Virtuosi, presenting concerts in Boston, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Seattle, Washington DC, and Toronto.

Olga Kern made her London debut with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in November 2006 playing Shostakovich Piano Concerto No. 1 with Leonard Slatkin conducting. Recent European appearances have included a tour of Austria and Switzerland with the Warsaw Philharmonic and Maestro Antoni Wit and a tour of Germany with the Czech Philharmonic and Maestro Zdenek Maçal. Upcoming engagements in Europe will include her Proms debut at Royal Albert Hall playing Rachmaninoff’s Paganini Variations with Leonard Slatkin in August 2008. She is also scheduled to perform with the orchestras of Copenhagen and Lyon, and she will be presenting recitals in Milan, Hamburg and Luxemburg.  Ms. Kern will make her South American debut with the Orquestra de São Paulo in March 2008. She recently made her Canadian debut with the National Arts Centre Orchestra and conductor Pinchus Zukerman in summer 2007, and she made her debut with the Taipei Symphony in June of 2006.

Miss Kern’s festival appearances are many. She is welcomed back annually to the Interlochen Festival and frequently to both the Bravo!Vail Festival and to the Ravinia Festival with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and James Conlon, after having made her debut there in 2002 with Christoph Eschenbach. She made her Hollywood Bowl debut in 2005 and returned to the Festival Casals in Puerto Rico in 2007, where she performed to a sold out venue. She has been a recent guest artist at several international music festivals, including the Klavier Ruhr and Kissinger Sommer festivals in Germany, the Radio-France Montpellier and Casadesus festivals in France, the Ohrid Festival in Macedonia, and the Busoni Festival in Italy.