SOFYA GULYAK

Sunday, April 19, 2026 | 3 PM
Vancouver Playhouse(Click for directions)

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Ticket Prices: A-$65, B-$52, C-$42; Seniors/Students/BCRMTA: A-$52, B-$42, C-$34

SOFYA GULYAK

Artist’s website

In September 2009 Sofya Gulyak was awarded 1st prize and the Princess Mary Gold Medal at the Sixteenth Leeds International Piano Competition – the first woman in the history of the competition to achieve this distinction.

Since then she has appeared all over the world to great acclaim. Her recital programs are frequently reviewed in superlatives, and her concerto appearances with major orchestras are noted in glowing terms by the world’s music press. Sofya has been praised for her “tremendous precision and coloration…exquisite soft playing …with delicacy” and described as a “Rach star”(Washington Post).

In recent years, she has been a professor of piano at the Royal College of Music in London. In 2023 she was appointed associate professor at the Jacobs school of Music at Indiana University.

A prolific recording artist, her performances on disc have received ecstatic reviews from some of today’s major critics. Her recording of Brahms’s Handel Variations led one writer to compare her favourably with the young Martha Argerich, and another critic who considered her performance superior to that of Murray Perahia.

Do join us for this, Sofya Gulyak’s long overdue return to Vancouver, her first concert here since 2013!

BACH-BUSONI: Chaconne
FRANK: Prelude, Fugue and Variation
BACH-BUSONI: Choral Prelude “ Nun komm,der Heiden Heiland” BWV659
BACH-BUSONI: Toccata e Fugue in D minor BW565
INTERMISSION
CHOPIN: Prelude in C sharp minor op.45
CHOPIN:. Rondo a la Mazur Op.5
CHOPIN-LISZT: From 6 Polish songs:
      Meine Freuden
      Madchen Wunsch
LISZT: Hungarian Rhapsody N2 (with Sofya Gulyak’s original cadenza)

With exploding colors, swirling prestidigitation, sweeping glissandos and thundering volleys, her performance was breathtaking. (Scott MacCelland, on her performance of Ravel’s La Valse)

It was, though, in the Waltz in A minor, Op. 34, by Chopin, that her artistry was even more revealing, as she showed us that so few notes could mean so much. A performance of aching nostalgia similar to that which has remained in my memory from one of Rubinstein’s last performances in London in the 70’s. (Christopher Axworthy, Music Commentary)

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19th International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition, 2-23 October 2025