Marina Primachenko

Marina Primachenko was born in what is now St. Petersburg, Russia. A prodigious child talent, she made her first public appearance at the age of four from which time she studied with Elena Gougel, the noted Russian teacher and pupil of the famous Heinrich Neuhaus. At seven she entered the Special School for Gifted Children (affiliated to the St. Petersburg Conservatoire) and began to appear regularly in local concert venues as a `child prodigy'.

She gave her first full concert at the age of thirteen in Moscow. A year later, she won First Prize at the St.Petersburg Young Virtuoso Competition playing Rachmaninov's First Piano Concerto (in its original version), marking her d�ut performance in the city's Philharmonic Hall.

On the completion of her academic studies, she entered the St. Petersburg (Rimsky-Korsakov) Conservatoire, studying in the class of Galina Fedorova (solo piano) and Felicia Fondaminskaya followed by Elena Shafran (chamber music). She completed her studies in 1981 with a First Prize in piano and a quadruple diploma as concert soloist, chamber pianist, teacher and accompanist. Finally, she obtained her Higher Senior Diploma in Performing and Teaching obtaining an `excellent' credit mention throughout.

She then pursued further courses lasting six years based at Moscow (Tchaikovsky) Conservatoire with Lyubov Timofeyeva (pupil of Yakov Zak) and Boris Petruschansky (graduate of Lev Naoumov and Heinrich Neuhaus), currently Professor of the Imola Piano Academy in Italy. Also in Moscow she received coaching from Dmitri Bachkyrov.

In 1985 Marina Primachenko was nominated as Professor at the Higher Senior School of Musical Studies in St. Petersburg which to this day remains one of the city's best musical establishments. In addition she played regularly throughout Russia, principally in Moscow and St. Petersburg (the Soviet authorities refused her permission to travel overseas up to 1988.)

Finally she was allowed to travel abroad -firstly to East Germany (Leipzig and Dresden) and then to Czechoslovakia where she was invited to the Southern Bohemia Festival to give a series of recitals and master classes. During the following years invitations were renewed and in 1990 she took part in the Prague Mozart Festival, soon followed by her nomination as Professor at the Conservatory of Cesk�Budejovice (Budweis). It is at this time that she left Russia for good definitively.

This formative time in Czechoslovakia proved to be of great importance, as much in the context of her teaching activities as in the development of her concert musician status. During this time Marina collaborated frequently with Czech Radio in notable performances of works by Haydn, Brahms, Chopin, Rachmaninov, Prokofiev and Martinu.

She was also to work with two of the great Czech teachers, Josef Palenicek and Pavel Stepan, contributing considerably to the development of her solo career.

Based in France since 1992, Marina Primachenko has further developed her teaching activities and has of course been the subject of many solo recital and concerto invitations from western European venues such as those in Paris, Lyon, Agen, Nantes, La Ciotat, the Lourmarin Festival, Guillestre, the Ligurie Festival (Italy), Freiburg (Germany) and so on.

Most recently she participated as Jury member in the Chopin competition in Marienbad and was invited to Russia (Kaliningrad) where she performed the works of Debussy, Ravel, Scriabin and Chopin with the Kaliningrad Philharmonic Orchestra.

Finally this summer saw her play in a series of concerts entitled `Homage to Chopin' (four Ballades, four Scherzos...) In September 1999 Marina took up a part-time teaching position at the Schola Cantorum, the famous establishment in Paris.