Valentina Lisitsa Biography
Valentina Lisitsa is a Ukrainian-American pianist. She previously resided in North Carolina before moving to Canada, and then to France.
Valentina Lisitsa Age
Lisitsa was born in Kiev, Ukraine, on 25th March 1973. She is 46 years as of 2019.
Valentina Lisitsa Career
Lisitsa was born in 1973 in Kiev, Ukraine. Her mom is a seamstress, also called Valentina. Evgeny, a father, was an engineer. She began practicing the piano at the age of three, performing her first solo recital at the age of four in 2009. She is of descent from Russia and Poland.
Her dream at that stage, despite her early approach to music, was to become a professional chess player. Lisitsa attended the Lysenko Music School and later the Kiev Conservatory, where she studied under Dr. Ludmilla Tsvierko with her future husband, Alexei Kuznetsoff. She started to take music more seriously when Lisitsa encountered Kuznetsoff. In 1991, at the Murray Dranoff Two Piano Competition in Miami, Florida, they won the first award. That same year, as concert pianists, they migrated to the United States to continue their careers. The couple got married in 1992. Their New York debut at the 1995 Lincoln Center Mostly Mozart Festival
In 2007, Lisitsa published her first video on YouTube. Her collection of Chopin etudes reached the number one place on Amazon’s classic video recordings and became the Chopin etudes on YouTube’s most-viewed internet collection.
Lisitsa and her husband continued their career by recording a 2010 CD of Rachmaninoff concertos with the London Symphony Orchestra with their life savings. Lisitsa was signed on to Decca Records in the spring of 2012, before her Royal Albert Hall debut, which later published her Rachmaninoff CD set. She had almost 50 million opinions on her YouTube videos by mid-2012.
Lisitsa has performed throughout the world at various venues including Carnegie Hall, David Geffen Hall, Benaroya Hall, Musikverein, and Royal Albert Hall. She is well recognized for her performance of internet recitals and streams. She also worked for multiple recital engagements with violinist Hilary Hahn.
Valentina Lisitsa Husband
She met her husband, pianist Alexei Kuznetsoff, at the Kyiv Conservatory and by 1991, the two were competing in the United States, winning top honors at the Dranoff International 2 Piano Competition in Miami.
Valentina Lisitsa Net Worth
Lisitsa is a Ukrainian American classical pianist who has a net worth of $5 million
Valentina Lisitsa Controversy
Since the pro-Russian disturbances in Ukraine in 2014 and the subsequent armed conflict, Lisitsa has earned criticism for her resistance to the Ukrainian government and support from pro-Russian separatists. The Toronto Symphony Orchestra canceled concerts with Lisitsa in April 2015, citing her “provocative” internet comments on her Twitter account; originally, the orchestra did not specify which tweets or other comments it thought crossed a line. Jeff Melanson, CEO of Toronto Symphony, subsequently given a seven-page PDF document listing the most “offensive” tweets on 8 April 2015. Melanson alleged that the document would “help people understand why we made this decision, and understand as well how this is not a free speech issue, but rather an issue of someone practicing very intolerant and offensive expression through Twitter.”
In reaction, the Toronto Star newspaper criticized the choice of the orchestra in an editorial, stating that “Lisitsa was not invited to Toronto to address her provocative political views. She was scheduled to play the piano. Second, prohibiting a musician to express” opinions that some think are offensive “demonstrates a complete inability to understand the notion of free speech.”
According to Paul Grod, then president of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress: “Ms. Lisitsa has been involved in a lengthy campaign to scorn, insult and dishonor the individuals of Ukraine in the face of direct military aggression by the Russian Federation.” Grod explained that “Most disturbing are the false allegations made by Ms. Lisitsa that Ukraine’s government is’ Nazi’ and that Ukraine’s government is setting up’ filtration camps.’” The New Jersey-based Ukrainian Weekly defined her posts as “anti-Ukrainian hate speech.” In reaction, she remarked that “satire and hyperbole[ are] the finest literary instruments to fight lies.”
Valentina Lisitsa Discography
Lisitsa recorded six CDs for Audiofon Records, including three solo CDs and two duet disks with her husband Alexei Kuznetsoff ; a CiscoMusic label Gold CD with DeRosa cellist ; a VAI label duet recital with violinist Ida Haendel ; and 24 Études and Schubert-Liszt Schwanengesang DVDs with Frédéric Chopin.
Her recording of the four violin and piano sonatas produced with Hilary Hahn by composer Charles Ives was published on the Deutsche Grammophon label in October 2011. Her album Valentina Lisitsa Live was published on 2 July 2012 at the Royal Albert Hall (based on her debut appearance at the venue on 19 June 2012).
Various artists, including Sergei Rachmaninoff, Franz Liszt, Frédéric Chopin and Ludwig van Beethoven, have performed several compositions by Lisitsa. Decca Records published her full album of Rachmaninoff concertos in October 2012. An album of Liszt works was released in October 2013 on Decca label in 2 formats–CD and 12 “LP which was cut unedited from analog tape. An even more recent album comprises a number of works of the composer and pianist Philip Glass. As of July 2019, her latest release on Decca records is a 10CD set titled Tchaikovsky: The Complete Solo Piano Works.