Mykola Petrovych Suk (* 21 December 1945, Kyiv) is a Ukrainian pianist. Honoured Artist of the Ukrainian SSR (1973). The son of Ukrainian choirmaster and teacher Petro Suk.
Biography.
Mykola Suk was born in Kyiv in 1945 into a family of musicians, studied at the Mykola Lysenko Kyiv Secondary Specialised Music School and at the Moscow Conservatory in the class of Professor Lev Vlasenko.
Laureate of the Liszt-Barthok International Competition. Honoured Artist of Ukraine.
He received international acclaim at the 1971 Liszt-Barthok International Competition in Budapest, where he won the Gold Medal. Playing both classical and contemporary music, he was the first interpreter of concertos and solo works by such composers as Valentyn Silvestrov, Ivan Karabyts, Myroslav Skoryk, and Virko Baley (some of these works were written for him personally). Joseph Horowitz, a renowned American musicologist and former music critic for the New York Times, called Mykola Suk "the greatest living performer of Liszt's music".
He currently lives in Las Vegas, where he teaches at the University of Nevada (UNLV). He is also Artist in Residence and Artistic Director of the Ukrainian Institute of America.
Since his American debut at Carnegie Hall in 1991, Mykola Suk has performed throughout Europe and the United States, including the premiere of Schnittke's Piano Concerto in Chicago.
In the late 90s, the pianist had a triumphant concert tour with the National Honoured Academic Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine in Austria and Germany. In a duet with Oleh Krysa, an outstanding Ukrainian violinist and student of David Oistrakh, he performed the complete cycle of sonatas by Ludwig van Beethoven.
Mykola Suk has repeatedly been a member of the jury of the International Competition for Young Pianists in memory of Volodymyr Horowitz in Kyiv.
