Eduard Zilberkant

Eduard Zilberkant's Biography

His solo CD, Zilberkant Plays Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky and Mussorgsky, was internationally released on the ACA label and was met with high critical praise. American Record Guide stated, "Zilberkant's artistic approach emphasizes a strongly colored rhetoric, supported by passionate and sensitive temperament…Zilberkant's pianistic and musical qualities are found not only in his speed, but also in his ability to distill the slow tempos by drawing them out to the extreme." Radio France, Polish Radio and Television and PBS Radio and Television in the United States have also broadcast his performances. Music critics have asserted that he "possesses a remarkable keyboard mastery; plays in the style of the old romantic masters; he knows how to extract quite a palette of colors from the piano; his playing is subtle and passionate at the same time; he has the equipment that makes for pianist greatness."

For the past seven years, Maestro Zilberkant has been the music director and conductor of the Fairbanks Symphony Orchestra and the Arctic Chamber Orchestra. With these two orchestras, Maestro Zilberkant has toured throughout Alaska and Canada. In 2004, the Fairbanks Symphony Orchestra recorded the Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 2 on the AMICME Classical label of Greece for the Universal Company with pianist, Lambis Vassiliadis and Maestro Zilberkant conducting. In the summer of 2008 the Fairbanks Symphony has been invited to tour Greece with concerts in Corfu and Samos.

Maestro Zilberkant is a sought after guest conductor. He has conducted the Czech National Symphony Orchestra in Prague and on tour to Germany. Recently, he conducted the orchestra of Pomeriggi Musicali di Milano in Italy, the Martinu Chamber Orchestra in the Czech Republic and Germany, and the Orchestra of the Teatro Massimo Bellini in Catania, Sicily. This fall Maestro Zilberkant will conduct the Manhattan Chamber Orchestra in New York City, and in the spring of 2008 he will conduct in Palermo, Sicily.

The Badische Zeitung wrote of his performance of the Dvorak's "New World Symphony", "[Maestro Zilberkant] made an impression for feeling the nuances of tempo, pauses, and accents… he brought out new colors and romantic feeling with full balance of the sound from the orchestra." After his performance of the Mozart's Symphony No. 41 with the Arctic Chamber Orchestra in Anchorage, Alaska, the Anchorage Daily News wrote: "[Maestro Zilberkant] brought admirable intelligence to his reading of the piece…and sculpting the individual lines into a monumental and heroic structure; his weaving of the finale's awesome counterpoint show him to be a musician of significance whom we hope to hear again."

A Fulbright Scholar in Germany, Eduard Zilberkant received a Solisten Diploma from the Freiburg Musik Hochschule. He received the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Temple University in Philadelphia. In 2006, Maestro Zilberkant received the prestigious "President's Professor Award" at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, where he presently is Chair of the Music Department, Professor of Piano and Head of Keyboard Studies and Music Director and Conductor of the Fairbanks Symphony Orchestra and the Arctic Chamber Orchestra.

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Eduard Zilberkant