Sergey
Schepkin
Music History and Musicology
Piano (Preparatory and Continuing Education)
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| photo by Kathy Chapman |
Sergey Schepkin has won great critical acclaim for his performances and recordings of J.S. Bach, and was hailed by The New York Times as "a formidable Bach pianist...[who] plays with the passion and drama of a young Glenn Gould." "No one who loves Bach can afford not to listen to these performances," Fanfare magazine wrote about Sergey Schepkin's recording of Bach's Partitas. The International Piano magazine judged his recording of the First Book of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier as one of the best ever made, along with those of Edwin Fischer and Sviatoslav Richter, and Amazon.com proclaimed, "For Bach Partitas, he is it." The Essential Listening Companion catalog considered Schepkin's recording of Bach's "Goldberg" Variations as one of the top three recordings of that work on the piano along with that by András Schiff and the 1981 version by Glenn Gould. The American Record Guide deemed Schepkin "the major Bach interpreter of his generation."
Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, Schepkin studied piano at the St. Petersburg Conservatory with Alexandra Zhukovsky and Grigory Sokolov, graduating summa cum laude in 1985. After his move to Boston in 1990, he studied with Russell Sherman at New England Conservatory, where he earned an Artist Diploma and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree, and where he currently teaches on the music history faculty. In 1994-98, Schepkin coached with the late legendary French-American pianist Paul Doguereau. Schepkin is currently in his third year as Associate Professor of Piano at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. He divides his time between Pittsburgh and Boston, where The Boston Phoenix recently described him as "one of Boston's great treasures, a supremely intelligent pianist who plays Bach as well as anyone." The Boston Globe defines Schepkin as "an artist of uncommon, almost singular capability and integrity... [who] synthesizes the most diverse approaches and insights."
A naturalized American, Schepkin has performed a broad range of solo, concerto and chamber repertoire worldwide. Schepkin has a particular predilection for Romantic, French, and Russian music, and was called "a Romantic firebrand" by The New York Times. His many awards include the First and Chopin prizes in the 1999 New Orleans International Piano Competition, the 1999 Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation Award, first prize in the International competition for Young Musicians in Prague, top prizes in the All-Russia and Crown Princess Sonja piano competitions, the 1993 Harvard Musical Association Award, and the 1992 Presser Foundation Award. In June 2003, Sergey Schepkin was awarded the Maestro Genius Grant from the Maestro Foundation in Los Angeles.
Schepkin's highly successful recital for the Boston's Bank of America Celebrity Series in April 2005 featured Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, Debussy's Images II, as well as The Rainbow Hexameron, six newly commissioned works by six Boston composers. Highlights of Schepkin's 2005-06 season included performances of the Tchaikovsky Trio for the Boston Symphony Orchestra Prelude Series with BSO members Lucia Lin, violin, and Owen Young, cello, as well recitals at the Harvard University's Fogg Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Schepkin's latest CD, featuring Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition and seven Rachmaninoff Preludes has been released this spring by Northern Flowers/St. Petersburg Musical Archive. Schepkin's next season will bring a recital at New York's Lincoln Center Glenn Gould celebration in October 2006, followed by a recital in St. Petersburg, Russia (where Schepkin has not performed since 1990), a performance of Rachmaninoff's Second Concerto with the Nashua Symphony (NH) in February 2007, and a performance of Bach's Goldberg Variations in Tokyo's Sumida Triphony Hall in March 2007
Diploma summa cum laude, 1985, graduate assistantship, 1987-89, St. Petersburg State Conservatory, Russia; AD, 1992, DMA, 1999, NEC. Recordings on Ongaku, Bridge, Centaur, Simax, Northern Flowers/St. Petersburg Musical Archive.
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