Foto: Ewan Nicholson

23-year-old ukrainian pianist ILLIA OVCHARENKO, winner of the 2022 Honens International Piano Competition, has taken the piano world by storm. In addition, he has been awarded prizes in more than 20 other competitions worldwide; recent successes include 1st prize at the 2024 Kissinger Piano Olympus, 1st prize at the New York International Competition and 2nd prize at the 2022 Hilton Head International Competition. He has performed as a soloist with orchestras such as the Orchestre National d’Île de France, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and the Calgary Philharmonic. He has performed at festivals and concert stages such as Carnegie Hall, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Sendesaal in Hanover, as well as the Gstaad Menuhin Festival and the Dresden Music Festival. Highlights of the 2024/25 season include debuts with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the Israel Philharmonic, the Edmonton Symphony and the San Antonio Philharmonic. He has also been invited to perform at the Konzerthaus Berlin, the “Folle Journee”, the Kissinger Olymp and the Dubai Opera.
This season, two recital albums will be released on the “Dicauvers” and Steinway labels. Illia Ovcharenko was born in Ukraine into a non-musical family, the son of a computer engineer mother and a father who was an athlete and coach. At a tender age, he discovered the unattended piano that stood in a corner of his parents’ house. At the age of six, he was taken to a performance of Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto; after the concert, he told his mother that he wanted to be a pianist when he grew up and began formal music lessons. Success came quickly and he made his concert debut at the age of 12 in the National Philharmonic of Ukraine. He then moved to Kiev to attend the Lysenko Sate Music Lyceum for gifted children. He then studied in Israel with Arie Vardi at the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music in Tel Aviv and is currently completing a master’s degree at the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media.