The "Soundworlds at the Piano" program will feature:
Pancho Vladigerov, Improvisation, Opus 36, No. 5
Edvard Grieg, Notturno, Opus 54, No. 4
Sergey Rachmaninoff, Prelude, Opus 32, No. 5
Béla Bartók, from Bulgarian Rhythms, Mikrokosmos VI
Carl Christian Bettendorf, Klavierstück IV
Pancho Vladigerov, Toccata, Opus 36, No. 6
Claude Debussy, Prelude: La fille aux chevuex de lin
Richard Beaudoin, The Artist and His Model I – La fille floutée
Claude Debussy, Preludes: Des pas sur la niege; Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l’air du soir; Ce qu’a vu le vent d’Ouest
Claude Debussy, L’isle joyeuse
About the Artist
Described by the New York Concert Review as a "unique musical personality" and a pianist with a “golden tone,” Victoria Tzotzkova has performed widely, as both recitalist and chamber musician, notably at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, Steinway Hall, The Miller Theater, Bechstein Piano Center, The Iridium, the Bulgarian Consulate General in New York, and at numerous other venues in the US, France, Germany, Switzerland, the UK, and her native Bulgaria. Growing up, Victoria studied at the National Music School in Sofia, performing regularly and making several recordings for the National Television and Radio. She later continued her studies at the Manhattan School of Music with Ms. Rosetta Goodkind, and has also worked with Alexis Weissenberg, Philippe Entremont, Philippe Bianconi, Emile Naoumoff, Herre-Jan Stegenga, Jacob Lateiner, Peter Takacs, Patricia Zander. Raised in classical performance traditions, Victoria now also experiments with improvisation in Romantic and contemporary idioms, performs new music, and works on collaborative performance projects.
Also a researcher, Victoria completed her PhD in music theory at Columbia University, with Professor George E. Lewis as her principal advisor. Her doctoral dissertation, Theorizing Pianistic Experience: Tradition, Instrument, Performer, focuses on sound production in classical piano performance, drawing on ethnographic theory and methods, psycho-acoustics and sound studies, and theoretical and experimental research in embodied cognition. Her research has received support from the Mind/Brain/Behavior Initiative at Harvard University, and Columbia University’s Reid Hall Institute for Scholars in Paris, France, and has been invited for presentation in different forums, including at Columbia University, Harvard University, Indiana University, the Eastman School of Music in the US, as well as at Cambridge University, Durham University, the Royal College of Music, London, UK, and the Orpheus Institute in Ghent, Belgium. As a performer-theorist, Victoria also works in keyboard harmony and preluding practices, and has studied in the Nadia Boulanger tradition at the European American Musical Alliance in Paris, the Naoumoff Piano Academy in Gargenville, and the American Conservatory at Fontainebleau, France. She is currently based at the Music Department of Harvard University, as a Research Assistant, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as an Affiliate Artist, and works on initiatives that showcase and explore the intersections of the arts and sciences.
