Yevhen Oleksandrovych Rzhanov (born 13 April 1938, Kharkiv, Ukrainian SSR) is a Ukrainian pianist and teacher, Honoured Artist of Ukraine since 1967. Professor of the Reinhold Glier Kyiv Institute of Music.
Biography.
He was born on 13 April 1938 in a family of musicians.
He studied at the Kyiv Specialised Music School under the tutelage of Daniil Romanovych Yudelevych.
From 1956 to 1964 he studied at the Tchaikovsky Moscow Conservatoire under Yakovlevich, where he was a postgraduate student from 1961 to 1964.
"Yevhen Rzhanov is undoubtedly one of the most talented pianists and musicians I have met in my almost forty years of teaching." "The pianist's repertoire is extremely wide and varied. Rzhanov practically plays the entire major piano repertoire from Bach to Prokofiev and Shostakovich. His role in promoting Soviet Ukrainian music is enormous. Rzhanov brings the best of our contemporaries to the concert stage."
- Y. V. Flier
Decisive in Rzhanov's creative career were his victories at creative competitions, including the All-Russian Piano Competition in 1961 and the Queen Elizabeth International Competition in Brussels in 1964.
In 1964, he moved to Kyiv and became a soloist with the Kyiv Philharmonic and a teacher at the Kyiv Conservatory. He worked as a teacher at the Kyiv Conservatory until 1985. For five years, he headed the Department of Special Piano. He also taught at the Lysenko School.
He was one of the co-founders of the Mykola Lysenko International Music Competition (1962).
From 1985 to 1992, he was a soloist at the Republican House of Organ and Chamber Music in Kyiv.
In 1960-1980, he was the only pianist to play all the opuses of Ukrainian composers: L. Revutsky, B. Lyatoshynsky and V. Kosenko.
In 1992, he moved to Germany, where he founded a small philharmonic society and gave concerts throughout Europe.
In 2010, he returned to Ukraine and resumed teaching at the R. M. Glière Kyiv Institute of Music and the Mykola Lysenko Kyiv Secondary Specialised Music School.
Repertoire
Rzhanov's repertoire includes more than fifty concertos for piano and orchestra (12 of them are by Ukrainian composers), solo piano works by Mykola Lysenko, V. Kosenko, M. Kolyada, L. Revutsky, B. Liatoshynsky, and others, Shtogarenko A. Y., Shamo I. N., Zhukovsky H. L., Filipenko A. D., Silvestrov V. V., Silvansky M. Y., Ishchenko Y. Y., Sechkin V. V., Stepanenko M. B., Skoryk M. M., Drago I. B., Kolodub J. Y., Nadenenko F. M., O. F. Znosko-Borovskyi, V. Kireiko and other authors.
During his work at the Republican House of Organ and Chamber Music, Yevhen Oleksandrovych twice held concert series "Harpsichord Music of the 16th-18th Centuries", where each cycle consisted of eight concerts by German, English, Italian, French and Eastern European composers. These include works by Girolamo Frescobaldi, d'Aglebert, François Couperin, Henry Purcell, Antonio Cabeson and others.
His repertoire includes works by Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Schumann, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Prokofiev, Ravel, Debussy, Shostakovich, Metner, Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Hindemith, Schonberg, Schnittke and others.
Ukrainian composers in the pianist's programme: B. Lyatoshynsky, V. Kosenko, M. Skoryk, L. Revutsky, Kireiko, Shtogarenko, Nadenenko, I. Karabits, Ishchenko, Verikovsky and others.
Yevhen Rzhanov played all the harpsichord concertos by J.S. Bach with the orchestra. Including works for two, three and four harpsichords.
However, his greatest love and professional interest in Rzhanov's work is Ukrainian music.
A significant place in the pianist's repertoire is occupied by the works of Boris Lyatoshynsky, Levko Revutsky and Viktor Kosenko.
Recognition
In 1967, he was awarded the honorary title of Honoured Artist of the Ukrainian SSR.
Member of the jury of many competitions, including international ones.
Collaborations.
Yevhen Rzhanov gave many concerts with prominent Ukrainian instrumentalists: Oleksii Horokhov, Vadym Chervovyi, Oleh Kudriashov, vocalists Anatolii Kocherha, Mariia Stefiuk, Yevdokiia Kolesnyk and others, and worked closely with the Mykola Lysenko Quartet.
Preserved heritage
The Fonds of Ukrainian Radio and Television hold recordings of works by Ukrainian composers (Lysenko, Kosenko, Liatoshynskyi, Revutskyi, Silvanskyi, Shtoharenko, Silvestrov, and many others) performed by Yevhen Rzhanov. Many recordings were made on gramophone discs.
Interesting facts
Yevhen Rzhanov was the first performer of many works:
Kosenko's Piano Concerto in all three movements (before the Maestro, only the first movement was performed for the public);
Piano Concerto by I. B. Drago;
Concerto for piano and orchestra by A. Kanerstein;
Concerto for piano and orchestra by Zh;
Concerto for piano and orchestra by G. I. Lyashenko;
Concerto for piano and orchestra by O. Bilash;
Concerto for piano and orchestra by Y. Ishchenko,
Three poems "In Memory of Musicians" by Andriy Shtoharenko;
Levko Revutsky's Concerto in the second edition;
Classical Sonata, Sonatina, plays, children's music, Monody by Valentyn Silvestrov;
Suite "Hutsul watercolours" by Igor Shamo;
Suite "Adventures of Baron Munchausen" by Mykola Silvansky;
Three cycles "Poetic Moods", sonatas for piano, sonatas for cello and piano, sonatas for violin and piano, sonatas for flute and piano by Yuriy Ishchenko; works by Herman Zhukovsky, Serhiy Mamonov, Fedor Nadenenko, Viktor Klin and many others.
Yevhen Rzhanov worked as a member of the editorial staff of the Musical Ukraine publishing house, compiling and editing collections of classical piano music, as well as editions of works by Ukrainian composers for children.
Levko Revutskyi presented Yevhen Rzhanov with a harpsichord with his own autograph after the first performance of his concerto in the second edition.
Ukrainian composers dedicated their works to Yevhen Rzhanov: V. Silvestrov - "Classical Sonata", Y. Ishchenko - "Poetic Moods", H. Lyashenko - "Piano Concerto".
