Lera Auerbach

Lera Auerbach (Russian: Лера Авербах; b. October 21, 1973 in Chelyabinsk, Russia) is one of the most widely performed composers of the new generation.

She was born in Chelyabinsk, a city in the Urals bordering Siberia. Auerbach continues the tradition of virtuoso pianist-composers of the 19th and 20th centuries. She is the youngest composer on the roster of the prestigious international music publishing company Hans Sikorski well-known as a home to Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Schnittke, Gubaidulina and Kancheli. Auerbach's music is characterized by its stylistic freedom and juxtaposition of tonal and atonal musical language.

Career
Auerbach made her Carnegie Hall debut in May 2002 performing her own Suite for Violin, Piano and Orchestra with Gidon Kremer and the Kremerata Baltica. Ms. Auerbach's music has been presented at Carnegie Hall each season since then. In 2005, Lera Auerbach was awarded the prestigious Hindemith Prize by the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival in Germany.

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 and Petersen String Quartets, the SWR and NDR (Hannover) Symphony Orchestras, NDR Hamburg and the Royal Danish Ballet. Lera Auerbach’s music has also been commissioned and performed by leading Festivals throughout the world including Caramoor, Lucerne, Lockenhaus, Bremen and Schleswig-Holstein.

Lera Auerbach has appeared as solo pianist at such prestigious venues as the Bolshoi Saal of the Moscow Conservatory, Tokyo's Opera City, New York's Lincoln Center, Munich's Herkulessaal, Oslo's Konzerthaus, Chicago's Symphony Hall and Washington's Kennedy Center.

Lera Auerbach holds degrees in piano and composition from The Juilliard School, where she studied piano with Joseph Kalichstein and composition with Milton Babbitt. She also graduated from the prestigious piano soloist program of the Hannover Hochschule für Musik.

A new commission by The Royal Danish Ballet, to celebrate Hans Christian Andersen's bicentenary, was Lera Auerbach's second collaboration with choreographer John Neumeier. The ballet is a modern rendition of the classic fairy tale 'The Little Mermaid' and was premiered successfully in April 2005.

In 2005 Lera Auerbach received the prestigious Paul-Hindemith-Prize by the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival. In the same year she received the Förderpreis Deutschlandfunk and the Bremer Musikfest-Prize where she is currently composer in residence.

Lera Auerbach is also a writer. She has published six volumes of poetry and prose in Russian.


Recordings
24 Preludes (BIS 2003)
Tolstoy's Waltz (BIS 2004)
Auerbach plays Mozart (ARABESQUE 2005)
Ballet for a Lonely Violinist (BIS 2005)
Preludes and Dreams (BIS 2006)
Cetera Desunt, String Quartet No. 3 (CAPRICCIO 2006)
Flight and Fire (PROFIL - Hänssler Classics 2007)