music.wikisort.org - Musician

Valentina Lisitsa[lower-alpha 1] (born 25 March 1970[1][2]) is a Ukrainian-American pianist.[3][4]

Valentina Lisitsa
Lisitsa in 2003
Background information
Born	1970 (age 51–52) Kyiv, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union
Genres	Classical
Occupation(s)	Classical pianist
Instrument(s)	Piano
Years active	1977–present
Website	valentinalisitsa.com

Lisitsa independently launched her career on social media, without initially signing with a tour promoter or record company. By 2012, Lisitsa was among the most frequently viewed pianists on YouTube.[5][6] The Toronto Symphony canceled her 2015 engagements as soloist with them because of her social media postings in support of pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine.[7][8]

Life and career

Lisitsa was born in Kyiv, Ukrainian SSR (now Ukraine). Her mother, also named Valentina, is a seamstress and her father, Evgeny, was an engineer.[5] Her older brother Eugene died in 2009.[4][5]

She started playing the piano at the age of three, performing her first solo recital at the age of four.[9] She is of Russian and Polish descent on her mother's side, while her father is of Ukrainian heritage.[7][10]

Lisitsa attended the Lysenko music school and, later, the Kyiv Conservatory,[11] where she and her future husband, Alexei Kuznetsoff, studied under Dr. Ludmilla Tsvierko.[12] When Lisitsa met Kuznetsoff, she began to take music more seriously.[13] In 1991, they won the first prize in The Murray Dranoff Two Piano Competition in Miami, Florida.[11][14][5] That same year, they moved to the United States to further their careers as concert pianists.[5] In 1992, the couple married.[5] Their New York debut was at the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center in 1995.[12]

Lisitsa posted her first YouTube video in 2007. Her set of Chopin etudes reached the number-one slot on Amazon's list of classical video recordings, and became the most-viewed online collection of Chopin etudes on YouTube.[15][16]

To advance her career, in 2010 Lisitsa and her husband put their life savings into recording a CD of Rachmaninoff concertos with the London Symphony Orchestra.[5] In the spring of 2012, before her Royal Albert Hall debut, Lisitsa signed with Decca Records, who later released her Rachmaninoff CD set.[5]

By mid-2012, she had logged nearly 50 million views of her YouTube videos.[6] By mid-2020, her videos reached 200 million views. Her YouTube channel had over 650,000 followers in early 2022.[17] Lisitsa signed a three-year contract with French record label Naïve in 2021.[17]

Lisitsa has performed in Carnegie Hall, David Geffen Hall, Benaroya Hall, Musikverein, Wigmore Hall and the Royal Albert Hall. She has posted online recitals and practicing streams. She has also collaborated with violinist Hilary Hahn in recital engagements.[11][5]

Political views

Lisitsa has expressed her opposition to what she considered Western interference within Ukraine.[8]

In April 2015, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra cancelled concerts with Lisitsa, citing her "provocative" online remarks on her Twitter account; the orchestra initially did not specify which tweets or other commentary it believed crossed a line.[18][19] Lisitsa said that the orchestra threatened her if she spoke about the cancellation.[20] The CEO of Toronto Symphony later provided a seven-page compilation of her tweets that prompted this decision and noted that it was "not a free speech issue, but rather an issue of someone practicing very intolerant and offensive expression through Twitter".[21][22]

The Toronto Star criticised the orchestra's decision in an editorial, noting that, "Lisitsa was not invited to Toronto to discuss her provocative political views. She was scheduled to play the piano. And second, banning a musician for expressing "'opinions that some believe to be offensive' shows an utter failure to grasp the concept of free speech."[23] The Ukrainian Weekly has described her postings as "hate speech."[24][18] In response, she commented that "satire and hyperbole [are] the best literary tools to combat the lies".[7][18] In 2022, Benjamin Ivry, wrote in International Piano Magazine that Lisitsa had "parrot[ted] Putin’s propagandistic talking points about Ukraine".[25]

She performed in front of Ukrainian Embassy in Moscow on 2 May 2022, to commemorate victims of 2014 Trade Unions House fire.[26] She performed in ruins of Mariupol on 9 May 2022.[27]

Discography

Lisitsa has recorded for the Audiofon, CiscoMusic, and VAI labels.[28]

Her recording of the four sonatas for violin and piano by composer Charles Ives, made with Hilary Hahn, was released in October 2011 on Deutsche Grammophon label. Her album Valentina Lisitsa Live at the Royal Albert Hall (based on her debut performance at that venue 19 June 2012) was released 2 July 2012.

Notes

References

External links

• Valentina Lisitsa's website
• Official Facebook page
• Her official Twitter page, one that was the source of the controversy
• Review of Valentina Lisitsa's 30 September 2010 recital at George Fox University
• Valentina Lisitsa and Alexei Kuznetsoff

На других языках

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- [en] Valentina Lisitsa

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[es] Valentina Lisitsa

Valentina Lisitsa (ucraniano, Валентина Лисиця; ruso, Валентина Лисица; translit. Valentyna Lysytsya; (Kiev, Ucrania, 11 de diciembre de 1973) es una pianista profesional ucraniana asentada en Estados Unidos. Su marido, Alexei Kuznetsoff también es pianista y compañero en los duetos de piano. Actualmente Lisitsa es una de las representantes de la compañía de pianos Bösendorfer.[1]

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[ru] Лисица, Валентина Евгеньевна

Валентина Евгеньевна Лисица (род. 25 марта 1970, Киев) — американская пианистка украинского[2] происхождения. Прославилась благодаря каналу[3] на YouTube, имеющему в общей сложности более 250 млн просмотров[4].

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