Elizaveta Don

When unexpectedly asked about her favorite composer, Elizaveta Don shakes her head. “There are so many brilliant composers in music history, how can you choose just one?” The breadth of her interest spans the entire range of musical epochs, from the Renaissance to contemporary music. She is particularly committed to the latter, with even world premieres in her repertoire. On the other hand, she has a passion for historical performance practice.

In addition to the piano, she also masters the harpsichord, on which she devotes herself to the music of the Renaissance and Baroque. She presents her musical skills both as a soloist and in chamber music, and has already performed in every conceivable instrumental combination, from duo to sextet. She is also interested in jazz, klezmer, and Balkan music and enjoys playing, singing, and improvising together with her husband, the Israeli clarinetist Eduard Don and his band.

Growing up as the daughter of an opera conductor, she spent many hours at the opera, where she learned numerous works by heart. This awakened her deep passion for vocal music and enabled her to work closely with singers. Raised in a musical family in Moscow, her career path became clear early on: at the age of six, she definitively decided to pursue a career as a musician. She began piano lessons with Nina Dolenko at the Yakov Flier Music School in Moscow and continued her training at the Academic Music College of the Moscow State Conservatory with Olga Mechetina, subsequently at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory with Sergei Dorensky. She then moved to Germany, where she completed her master’s degree and concert exam at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg with distinction, studying with Evgeni Koroliov.

As a concert pianist, she has won prizes at more than fifteen different piano competitions, including the Verona International Piano Competition, the Blüthner Golden Tone Award competition, the Euregio Piano Award (Geilenkirchen), the MozArte International Piano Competition (Aachen), and the ClaviCologne International Piano Competition. Her appearances have taken her to over forty countries worldwide, including Australia, Argentina, Canada, India, Japan, Paraguay, Thailand, the USA, and many in Europe. Being able to travel is a particularly wonderful aspect of her job because traveling is her biggest hobby. “As a child, I loved looking at maps, and very early on I knew the difference between ‘Austria’ and ‘Australia.’ Then I started reading travel guides, and even before I visited Paris, London, and Rome, I knew the cities well.”

Her debut album is entirely dedicated to the “prelude” – a form that is particularly close to her heart. In addition to famous works by Claude Debussy and Dmitri Shostakovich, she also interprets Frank Martin‘s little-known cycle, regarding it as an absolute masterpiece. Elizaveta Don sees these preludes as a journey through uncertainty and hope, the real and surreal, the irony and tragedies of the twentieth century. On this album, you can hear how this journey is reflected in music.

Picture: Emil Matveev

The artist's homepage:

https://www.elizavetadon.com