Ashkenazy Vovka

Vovka Ashkenazy, who is of Russian and Icelandic parentage, was born in Moscow but spent most of his childhood in England and Iceland. At the age of six, he began having piano lessons with Roagnvaldur Sigurjonsson, one of Iceland's foremost piano tutors. Ten years later he went to England to study with Sulamita Aronovsky in Manchester at the Royal Northern College of Music. He also benefited from occasional study sessions with pianists such as Peter Frankl and Leon Fleisher.

Vovka Ashkenazy made his debut in London at the Barbican Centre in 1983 with the London Symphony Orchestra under Richard Hickox, with whom he performed Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto.

Since then, Vovka Ashkenazy's career has taken him all across Europe, and to Australia, New Zealand, Japan and the Americas. He has participated in the Marlboro Festival in Vermont, as well as the Edinburgh and Spoleto festivals. Orchestras he has appeared with include nearly all the major British orchestras as well as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Australian Chamber, and the Berlin Symphony Orchestras. Conductors he has worked with include his father, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Semyon Bychkov, Martin Fischer-Dieskau and Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, at venues such as the Hollywood Bowl, the Sydney Opera House, the Berlin Philharmonic and the Royal Festival Hall, London.

Vovka Ashkenazy is very active as a chamber musician and has recorded a CD of Italian music for clarinet and piano with Dimitri Ashkenazy, his brother, with whom he toured Japan in 1997, 2000 and 2002. He has also performed and recorded with his father, Vladimir Ashkenazy, and their recordings on DECCA include Bartok's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, Rachmaninoff's Suite for Piano Four Hands, Schumann's Andante and Variations for Two Pianos, Two Cellos and Horn, and a 2009 release of a new CD with French music for two pianos. A second two-piano CD of Russian music is planned for summer 2011. Their two-piano concert activities in 2010 have included performances in Italy, Switzerland and Turkey, as well as two tours of the Far East. A tour of Japan and South Korea is planned for the autumn of 2011. Vovka Ashkenazy has also worked together with the Reykjavik Wind Quintet and has released a CD with them on the Chandos label. A second CD is due out this year.

Alongside his concert activities, Vovka Ashkenazy also devotes his time to teaching and masterclasses. He has given master classes in Australia, Denmark, England, Greece, Guatemala, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and the U.S. and he is also a member of the chamber music coaching staff at Pro Corda in the UK. He was Professor of Piano at the Conservatoire Gabriel Faure in Angouleme, France, from 1998 until 2007, when he moved to Switzerland.

Vovka Ashkenazy has contributed, through performances, to several charitable causes, including Action for Children and Cystic Fibrosis Trust in the UK, Telethon in Switzerland, and the Bridges Peace Foundation in Cambodia and the Philippines. He was made Honorary Artistic Adviser of the Guangzhou Opera House in November 2010.