Viviana Sofronitsky

Viviana Sofronitsky is a Russian-Canadian pianist. She was born in Moscow in 1960, the daughter of Vladimir Sofronitsky and the pianist Valentina Dushinova.

She studied at the Central Music School and graduated from the Moscow Conservatory both as a pianist, in the class of M. Fyodorova, and as an organist, in the class of N. Gureyeva-Vedernikova. After postgraduate study she worked as a solo organist of the Belarusian Philharmonic in Polotsk.

Sofronitsky also worked as a harpsichordist and organist with the early music ensemble Madrigal under Alexei Lyubimov, and with the Academy of Early Music under Lyubimov and Tatyana Grindenko. At the same time she gave solo concerts in Moscow, Leningrad, Kyiv, Minsk, Sverdlovsk, and other cities.

In 1989 she left for the United States, where she studied early music at Oberlin College. In 1990 she moved to Canada, where she began to tour and record actively. She became a citizen of Canada in 1994. In 1999 she received a diploma in harpsichord and historical piano at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. Since 2001 she has lived in the Czech Republic.

Her husband is Paul McNulty, a maker and restorer of historical pianos. Sofronitsky tours internationally and performs on unique instruments made by McNulty after models such as Stein 1788, Walter 1792, Graf 1819, and Pleyel 1830.

In 1999 she won first prize and the award for best performance at the Bach Tage Berlin competition in Germany, and in the same year she took first prize at the Musica Antiqua – Festival van Vlaanderen competition in Belgium. She has been a regular participant in many international music festivals in the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Slovakia, Poland, Norway, Denmark, and France, and has also appeared on radio in Germany, France, Belgium, Denmark, the United States, and Canada.

Her recordings mentioned in the article include Mozart’s complete works for piano and orchestra on original instruments, works by Franciszek Lessel for piano and orchestra, Beethoven, Hummel and Neuling for fortepiano and mandolin, Beethoven’s trios for clarinet, cello and fortepiano, Chopin’s complete works for cello and piano with Sergei Istomin, Schubert solo works, and sonatas by Johann Ladislaus Dussek.