The biography of Bulgarian pianist VIKTORIYA VASSILENKO (b. 1992) is rich in professional sucesses. She embarked on a career in piano performance under the influence of her family of professional musicians. Graduated from the Sofia National School of Music in 2011, where she was taught by Antonina Boneva and Stella Dimitrova-Maistorova. Later, she studied under Dmitry
Bashkirov at the Reina Sofia High Schoool of Music in Madrid (2011-15), and almost simultaneously studied at the New Bulgarian University in Sofia and at the Academy of Lago di Como in Italy. From 2016, she continued her studies at the Queen Elizabeth College of Music in Brussels.
Victoria is winner of ten first prizes from national and international piano competitions (in Bulgaria, Italy, Greece, Czech Republic, Brittain, Romania) and concomitant special prizes: she won the first and four special awards at the Franz Schubert international competition in Russe, Bulgaria; the first and the special prize at the Albert Roussel competition in Sofia; the First and Special Prize at the International Dimitar Nenov Piano Competition in Razgrad, Bulgaria; the First Prize at the Chopin In Memoriam competition (Varna, 2010), and others. She received the special award for talented pianist and the award for the performance of works by A. Dvořák and R. Shchedrin at the European Piano Competition – Prague. In 2012, Ms. Vassilenko became the second prize winner (with first prize not awarded) at the James Mottram International Piano Competition in Manchester, UK. One of the great successes of the young pianist was her awarding with the first and special prize of the Bucharest Philharmonic Orchestra of the George Enescu International Competition in Bucharest (2016). In the 2012/2013 school year at the Madrid School of Music she received the award for the most promising young pianist from the class of Prof. Dmitry Bashkirov which was bestowed by Her Majesty Queen Sophia. On the following year, she received the prize once again, this time for the most successful chamber ensemble together with Mohammed Hiber (violin, France) and Laura Szabo (violoncello, Hungary). She is the winner of the Crystal Lyre Award for a young performer for the 2007/08 and 2011/2012 concert seasons. In January 2009, Victoria received the Grand Prize of the Dimitar Berbatov Foundation for excellence in the arts and in 2009 he was nominated for a young musician of the year. Over the years 2009-2011 she has been a fellow of the Musica Mundi Festival for chamber music in Brussels, where she played as a soloist with the Festival Orchestra under the baton of Maxim Vengerov, and in April 2013 was invited to play as soloist with Brussels Chamber Orchestra as part of the program of the concert on the occasion of the Jubilee of the Festival fifteenth anniversary. This was followed by a series of engagements with prestigious
festivals and orchestras, such as the European Days of Culture – 2014 in Frankfurt as a soloist on the Classic FM Orchestra; Brussels Chamber Orchestra – Orchestra, Royal Liverpool, the Sofia Soloists Chamber Orchestra, Symphony Orchestra, Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra and the philharmonic orchestras Ruse, Burgas, Vratza, Razgrad. Victoria took part in the festivals Arts Salon, Pianissimo, Apollonia, Sofia Music Weeks, Sofia Music Summer, Canetti and March Music Days (Russe), European Music Festival, Varna Summer Festival, Music Days at the Balabanov House, Varna Summer, Katya Popova Laureate Days, Young Classics Europe Youth Musical Festival in Passau, Germany, Santander Music Festival and Academy, and others. In 2010,
Victoria debuted in the United States – she gave a recital in New York and performed as soloist at the Lincoln Orchestra in Chicago. She took part in the master classes of Dmitri Bashkirov, William Grant Nabore, Stanislav Youdenitch, Malcolm Bilson, Dmitri Alexeev, Michail Voskresensky, Boris Berman, Paul Badura-Skoda, Naum Grubert, Plamena Mangova, Boyan Vodenicharov; chamber music – Ferenc Rados, Elena Ashkenazy, Alexander Bondurijansky, Gunter Pichler, Maxim Vengerov, Ivry Gitlis, Franc Helmerson, and many others.
