Katia Skanavi has quickly become a Festival-audience favorite since making her debut in 2023, and this summer she returns for three programs, including a can’t-miss recital with violinist Chad Hoopes and our thrilling season-finale concert.
The Moscow- and Berlin-based Skanavi, who studied at the Gnessin School for Gifted Children, had an auspicious start to her career at the age of just 12, when, in the Grand Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, she performed Kabalevsky’s Piano Concerto No. 3 (known as the Youth Concerto) conducted by the composer himself. A few years later, in Paris, she won several prizes in the final rounds of the Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud Competition, which were held on her 18th birthday.
Skanavi went on to study at the Paris Conservatory and the Cleveland Institute of Music, and she earned her doctorate at the Moscow Conservatory, where she now teaches. In 1994, she won the Maria Callas Grand Prix competition in Athens, and in 1997, she won prizes at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Fort Worth.
Skanavi has said that she prefers the atmosphere of a live concert to a recording studio, and she’s released several recordings of her live recitals. You can experience that live atmosphere—with all the electricity that ignites Skanavi as a performer—three times this summer, beginning with a highly anticipated duo recital on Tuesday, August 12, at noon, alongside the acclaimed and award-winning violinist Chad Hoopes. Hoopes and Skanavi come together for a performance of two major works: Brahms’s gorgeous Sonata in A Major, Op. 100, and Beethoven’s groundbreaking and jaw-droppingly virtuosic Kreutzer Sonata.
The following evening, on Wednesday, August 13, Skanavi and seven other Festival musicians perform in Festival Artistic Director Marc Neikrug’s moving World War II–set play with music, Through Roses, which stars and is directed by Tony, Drama Desk, and Theatre World award–winning actor John Rubinstein. Then, to bring the Festival’s 52nd season to a powerful close, Skanavi joins violinist William Hagen, violist Julianne Lee, and cellist Eric Kim for the last work on the last concert: Dvořák’s sweeping, orchestral-like Piano Quartet in E-flat Major on Monday, August 18.
Tickets for the Festival’s 2025 season are on sale now. Explore our 2025 calendar here, and purchase your tickets either online or through our Box Office at 505-982-1890.