Dubravka Tomsic - Bio »
Dubravka Tomsic
The celebrated Slovenian pianist Dubravka Tomsic enjoys “something of a
cult status among pianophiles” (Gramophone Magazine), with performances that
convey “heroic power and Olympian vision” (Los Angeles Times) as well as
“splendor, drama, passion, poetry, and subtlety” (Boston Globe). The only
protégé of legendary pianist Artur Rubinstein, who considered her “a perfect
and marvelous pianist,” she gave her first public recital at age five and later
embarked on an international career that took her to all five continents,
performing more than four thousand concerts to date.
Despite her legendary stature in music circles, it was only
in 1989, after a hiatus of almost thirty years, that Tomsic was reintroduced to
American audiences with a triumphant gala performance at the Newport Music
Festival. In quick succession recitals at the prestigious series of Los
Angeles, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Cleveland, Kansas City, Atlanta,
Seattle, and Fort Worth followed, leading to countless re-engagements ever
since.
Current engagements include the Slovenia Philharmonic,
Monterey Symphony, and Huntsville Symphony. She will also be a judge at the
Cleveland International Piano Competition and the Virginia Waring International
Competition (formerly the Joanna Hodges International) in Palm Desert, CA.
In April 2008, Tomsic returned to the United States for her
annual tour, this time with appearances at the Celebrity Series in Boston, San
Francisco Performances, the Master Pianists Series in Kansas City, the Gilmore
Festival, concerts in Middlebury and Schenectady, as well as her debut with the
Honolulu Symphony. She also performed at the Festival International Piano aux
Jacobins in Toulouse, France, and returned to the London
Festival Orchestra. Last season, she opened again at the Newport Festival, made
debuts with the Louisiana Philharmonic and the London Festival Orchestra, and
returned to the Monterey Symphony with Chopin’s E minor Concerto.
Highlights of recent seasons include several performances
with the Boston Symphony under both Seiji Ozawa and Bernard Haitink at Symphony
Hall and Carnegie Hall, a solo recital at the Tanglewood Festival, the Pasadena
Symphony under Jorge Mester, the Mexico City Philharmonic and recitals in Portland, Boston, San Francisco, Kansas
City, Rockport, and at New York’s
Alice Tully Hall.
Over the course of her career, Tomsic has also been heard in
the major halls of Munich, Berlin, Prague, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Budapest,
Madrid, Amsterdam, London and Rome and at the international festivals of
Dubrovnik, Vienna, Prague, Naples, Dresden, Paris, Mexico City, Joliette
(Canada), Newport, Tanglewood, and Mostly Mozart in New York City. Equally in
demand as a soloist with orchestra, she has appeared with the Vienna Symphony,
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of London, Czech Philharmonic, Leipzig Gewandhaus
Orchestra, l’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Munich Philharmonic, Berlin
Symphony, Mozarteum Orchestra in Salzburg, Dresden Staatskapelle, Moscow State
Orchestra, the symphonies of Boston, Atlanta, Detroit, San Francisco and the
major orchestras of Australia.
More than eighty CD recordings released since 1987 attest to
Dubravka Tomsic’s status as a major recording artist. In addition to The Art
of Dubravka Tomsic and a disc of favorite encores, she has recorded
concertos by Brahms, Beethoven, Chopin, Grieg, Liszt, Mozart, Rachmaninoff,
Saint-Saens, Schumann, and Tchaikovsky, and recital works by Bach, Beethoven,
Brahms, Chopin, Debussy, Liszt, Mozart, Scarlatti and Srebotnjak. She can be
heard on Vox Classics, Koch International and other labels. In 2003 she won the
Grand Prix du Disque of the Franz Liszt Society in Budapest for her CD on the ipo label,
featuring an all-Liszt program that includes the B minor Sonata.
Tomsic began her studies at the Ljubljana Academy of Music
and at age twelve moved to New York on the
recommendation of Claudio Arrau to study with Katherine Bacon at the Juilliard School. While still a teenager she
earned a Bachelor of Science and Diploma in Piano with two special awards and
made her New York Philharmonic, Town Hall and Chicago recital debuts. She also gave a
recital at Carnegie Hall about which Artur Rubinstein wrote a glowing account
in his memoirs My Many Years.
As a young pianist, Dubravka Tomsic won many awards and competitions
and now serves as juror for several major international piano competitions,
including the Van Cliburn, Leeds, Beethoven, Clara Haskil, Santander,
AXA Dublin and the International Piano-e-Competition in Minneapolis. In May 2005 she was officially awarded
the title of Honorary Citizen of Ljubljana by the city’s mayor. She makes her
home there and is Full Professor at the Ljubljana
University - Academy of Music.
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