Program

About the Artist

Georgian-born pianist Sophiko Simsive began playing at age three, taught by her mother. At only eleven years old she performed Beethoven’s Second Piano Concerto with the student orchestra of Georgia at the Beethoven Festival in Bonn (Germany) and played the same concerto in a Rudolf Buchbinder master class in Switzerland. At that time, in 2003, conductor Lev Markiz discovered her at the Music Gymnasium of Tbilisi, where she studied with professors Maka Aladashvili and Alexander Garber. While at the Gymnasium, she was a recipient of a scholarship by Vladimir Spivakov and performed at the Kremlin in Moscow. She toured the Netherlands with I Virtuosi Italiani under Lev Markiz and performed the Mozart Piano Concerto No. 9. In the fall of 2007, Sophiko entered the Sweelinck Conservatory of Amsterdam, at 15 their youngest pupil. Under the guidance of professor Mila Baslavskaya, she earned a bachelor’s degree with honors in 2012. After graduation, she studied with professor Jacques Rouvier at the Universität der Künste in Berlin.

During her first year at the Sweelinck Conservatory, Sophiko won first prize at the Princess Christina Concours in the Netherlands. The prize included a performance of Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto with the Residential Orchestra of The Hague under Jan Willem de Vriend, and a chamber music tour in the USA and Canada. In 2008 she won the Yamaha Piano Competition in Amsterdam. Sophiko played a solo recital at the Canterbury Festival in England in 2011 and was invited to the academy program of the International Music Festival of Verbier in 2013.

In 2015, Sophika performed with cellist Kian Soltani at Carnegie Hall and performed eleven solo recitals in the Netherlands as a Dutch Classical Talent finalist. She won in her category of the “Young Pianist Foundation Competition 2015” during which she played Liszt’s First Piano Concerto with the Noord Nederlands Orkest under Pieter-Jelle de Boer. Sophiko was awarded both the audience prize and the prize for the obligatory work by Dutch composer Diderik Wagenaar. Further in 2015 Sophiko won the first prize as well as the press prize at the “Geertruidenberg Klassiek”. In January 2016 she gave a series of concerts together with violinist Amarins Wierdsma in Indonesia organized by the “Erasmus Huis”. Sophiko was the winner of the GrachtenfestivalPrijs 2016 of the Netherlands and was Artist in Residence during the Grachtenfestival 2017.

Sophiko has participated in masterclasses with pianists Dmitri Alexeev, Dmitri Bashkirov, Pascal Devoyon, Klaus Hellwig, Ferenc Rados, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, and Lilya Zilberstein. She is currently a graduate student at Yale School of Music in Connecticut, USA, where she studies with pianist Boris Berman.