Yekaterina Lebedeva

Yekaterina Lebedeva studied at the Kiev State Conservatoire, graduating with distinction in 1993 after winning several prizes.

In March 1998 she was invited to give a debut recital at the Purcell Room as part of the South Bank Centre’s first Young Musician's Platform, ‘FRESH’. This was the first of many appearances at the South Bank Centre, including the premiere of the Glass Piano opera for piano, soprano and voice. Yekaterina has performed Stravinsky’s Concerto for Piano and Winds with the Orchestra of Colours in the Athens Megaron, and premiered Schnittke Concerto for Piano and Strings at the Cairo Opera House. She was the featured musical artist at the International Herald and Tribune’s London Arts Season, ‘Breathless’ in 2005.

Yekaterina is a keen performer of 20th century and contemporary music and has premiered commissioned works by modern British composers as well as presenting the Soviet music of the 1960s, a fascinating time of artistic blossoming and subsequent political clampdown and stagnation. As well as her natural empathy with Russian music, Yekaterina has established a wide repertoire of major works for piano from the impassioned philosophical works of Beethoven, Brahms and Schubert to the delicacy and fragility of the 19th century French masters like Claude Debussy.

As a teacher and educator she has worked at Kiev Specialist Music School, Istanbul Conservatoire, Trinity College of Music and the Royal College of Music in London. She is a mentor of the Professional Development course for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music and a former director of the Croydon Centre for Young Pianists. Yekaterina has given masterclasses in Hungary, Poland, Germany and Greece.