This official Lera Auerbach myspace page is mantained and operated in collaboration with Lera Auerbach's music publisher Internationale Musikverlage Hans Sikorski (Hamburg), general management Impresariat Simmenauer (Hamburg) and DeStella Creative Enterprises (New York), with input from the composer herself.
."I was simply shocked at the maturity and depth which is contained in Lera Auerbach's works. It is unbelievable! Truly a great talent!" — Sofia Gubaidulina enthuses these admirable words about her fellow Russian composer — an impressive voice on the international music scene.
Auerbach is a cultural triple-threat — an accomplished composer, pianist, and poet. Described as a passionate and versatile musician, Auerbach has a compositional voice that is communicative, imaginative, and engaging. Often referred to as polystylistic, her music draws both performer and listener into her sound world. Auerbach's music is characterized by its stylistic freedom and juxtaposition of tonal and atonal musical language.
Lera Auerbach continues the great tradition of virtuoso composer-pianists of the 19th and 20th centuries. She is one of the most widely performed composers of the new generation. Lera is the youngest composer in the roster of Hamburg's prestigious international music publishing company Hans Sikorski, home to Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Schnittke, Gubaidulina and Kancheli. Auerbach is also a writer noted for her poetry ("1996 Poet of the Year" by the International Pushkin Society), prose, novels, and numerous contributions to Russian-language literary magazines and journals. Her poetry is taught in Russian schools and universities as required reading for selected modern literature courses.
Auerbach's compositions have been commissioned and performed by a wide array of artists, orchestras and ballet companies including Gidon Kremer, the Kremerata Baltica, David Finckel, Wu Han, Vadim Gluzman, The Tokyo, Kuss, Parker and Petersen String Quartets, the SWR and NDR (Hannover) Symphony Orchestras, Royal Danish Ballet and Hamburg State Ballet. Lera Auerbach's music has also been commissioned and performed by leading Festivals throughout the world including Caramoor, Lucerne, Lockenhaus, Schwetzingen, Moscow Autumn, Les Musiques, Bremen and Schleswig-Holstein.
An active performer, Lera Auerbach has appeared as solo pianist at the Bolshoi Saal of Moscow Conservatory, Tokyo's Opera City, New York's Lincoln Center, Munich's Herkulessaal, La Roque D'Antheron, Oslo's Konzerthaus, Chicago's Symphony Hall and Washington's Kennedy Center. She made her Carnegie Hall debut in May 2002 performing her own Suite for Violin, Piano and Orchestra with Gidon Kremer and the Kremerata Baltica. Lera Auerbach's music has been presented at Carnegie Hall each season since then. In 2005 she was awarded the prestigious Hindemith Prize by the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival in Germany. Also in 2005 she was awarded the "Förderpreis Deutschlandfunk".
Born in Chelyabinsk, a city in the Urals bordering Siberia, Lera Auerbach became one of the last artists to defect the Soviet Union during a concert tour in 1991 while still in her teens. She subsequently earned Bachelor and Master's degrees from The Juilliard School. In 2002 she graduated from the prestigious piano soloist program of the Hannover Hochschule für Musik.
Lera Auerbach is one of the most gifted artists I ever met. Her strong talent which is evident in so many fields — performing, composing, writing — is nurtured by a deep respect towards the past, but still allows her creations to remain sincere and personal, while being innovative and adventurous. — Gidon Kremer
