Vassily Lobanov is said to be one of the greatest Russian pianists and composers of his generation. Born in Moscow in 1947, he attended the city’s central conservatory and was later admitted to the Tchaikovsky conservatory. In the following years, he continued his piano studies while also beginning a close collaboration with Sviatoslav Richter.
Lobanov gave his first public concert in 1966. After receiving authorization to perform abroad in 1978, he gave concerts in nearly every city with a brilliant musical tradition in Europe, the US, Japan and South America, performing with such outstanding conductors as Gennady Rozhdestwensky, Heinrich Schiff, Juri Bashmet and Christoph Poppen. Lobanov also participated in numerous music festivals, including Berliner Festwochen, Schleswig-Holstein-Festival, Wiener Festwochen, Musikfestage Mondsee and the Lucerne, Kuhmo, Casals, Kreuth, Tours and Santa Fe festivals.
Between 1978 and 1990, Vassily Lobanov formed a piano trio with Oleg Kagan and Natalia Gutman. He also performed in duo with Sviatoslav Richter between 1982 and 1984, and frequently played chamber music with such outstanding artists as Leonidas Kavakos, Viktor Tretiakov, Juri Bashmet, Eduard Brunner, Kolja Blacher, Charles Neidich, and Kim Kashkashian.
He has given master classes for piano, composition and chamber music in various countries (Austria, Chile, Finland, Germany, Japan, Poland) and has been teaching at the Summer Academy of Salzburg’s Mozarteum since 1997. According to Lobanov himself, his activities as a composer were influenced by Rachmaninov, Messiaen and Shostakovich. His style underwent drastic changes in the 1980s, as he abandoned his earlier complexity in favor of a neotonal idiom that he sometimes refers to as “minimalist drama”.
Some of his performances were broadcasted by Radio Moscow, Radio France, BBC, RAI, HR Frankfurt, SR Saarbrücken and Sender Freies Berlin, while his recordings were published on various labels, including Philips, Ondine, Melodia, Tudor, Classics Live et Le Chant du Monde.
Vassily Lobanov has been living in Germany since 1990. In 1997, he founded the Osnabrück music festival and remained its artistic director until 2001. He has been teaching piano at the Cologne conservatory since 1997.
