Olga Scheps

Olga Scheps was born in Moscow in 1986 to Jewish Ukrainian parents. The family moved to Germany when she was six and continues to live there. The daughter of two pianists, she discovered piano playing for herself at age four. 

At an early age, she had already developed a unique keyboard playing style, combining intense emotiveness and powerful expressivity with extraordinary pianistic technique. Among those who discovered these talents was Alfred Brendel, who encouraged the young pianist. A holder of scholarships from the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben and Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes, she completed her studies with Pavel Gililov in her adopted home of Cologne in 2013, passing her concert examination with distinction. She rounded out her training with Arie Vardi and Dmitri Bashkirov. 

Besides the well-known works for piano, Olga Scheps’s repertory consists of compositions rarely heard in the concert hall, including the posthumous Études of Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt’s Malédiction, Olivier Messiaen’s Oiseaux exotiques, Antonín Dvořák’s Piano Concerto, Arvo Pärt’s Lamentate, and Mieczysław Weinberg’s Piano Quintet. In September 2023, she premiered David Garrett’s Piano Concerto at the Tsinandali Festival. 

Her solo recitals are as popular with audiences worldwide as her acclaimed appearances as a soloist with orchestra and her chamber projects. Such noted conductors as Thomas Dausgaard, Lorin Maazel, José Serebrier, Marcus Bosch, Ralf Weikert, Michel Tabachnik, Antoni Wit, Ivor Bolton, Cristian Mandeal, Christoph Altstaedt, Tugan Sokhiev, Simone Young, Markus Poschner, and Pablo Heras-Casado have invited Scheps to collaborate with them. 

Among the leading orchestras with which she has appeared in concert are the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, the Munich Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the State Symphony Cappella of Russia, the Staatskapelle Weimar, the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, the NDR Radiophilharmonie, the Orchestre national du Capitole de Toulouse, the Prague Philharmonia, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the New Japan Philharmonic, the Staatsorchester Braunschweig, the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra, and the Royal Seville Symphony Orchestra. 

Scheps now performs with great success in world-famous concert halls such as the Elbphilharmonie, the Berliner Philharmonie, the Kölner Philharmonie, the Konzerthaus (Vienna), Cadogan Hall (London), the Tonhalle (Zurich), and Suntory Hall (Tokyo). She is a sought-after guest at festivals like the Rheingau Musik Festival, Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the Kissinger Sommer, the Heidelberger Frühling, the Klavier-Festival Ruhr, the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, the MDR Musiksommer, Piano Fest at the Lucerne Festival, the ACHT BRÜCKEN Festival in Cologne, the Mozart Festival Würzburg, the Mersin International Music Festival in Turkey, and the Menuhin Festival Gstaad. 

A passionate chamber musician, she plays regularly with such artists as Alban Gerhardt, Daniel Hope, Adrian Brendel, Jan Vogler, Nils Mönkemeyer, the Danish String Quartet, the Danel Quartet and the Kuss Quartet, with which she recorded Mieczysław Weinberg’s Piano Quintet. 

Since 2009, Olga Scheps has been an exclusive Sony Classical artist. Her debut album, Chopin, immediately won an ECHO Klassik Award. The two recordings that followed, Russian Album and Schubert, were also highly praised by the press. Her fourth Sony Classical release features Chopin’s Piano Concertos Nos. 1 and 2 with the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra. The success of her solo album, Vocalise, was surpassed by her album, Satie, which Olga Scheps recorded on the occasion of the French composer’s 150th birthday. It reached the top spot on the German classical music charts at launch. 

She broke new ground with the album 100% Scooter (Piano Only), on which she recorded arrangements of the most famous Scooter hits by Sven Helbig. Following a recording of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne, Scheps’s album Melody features a repertoire ranging from Bach to Aphex Twin, tracing an arc across four centuries. A further release features her alongside the Kuss Quartet performing the Weinberg Piano Quintet. On her latest album, Family, she combines works from the established classical canon with new piano arrangements of highly popular melodies and soundtracks, as well as world premiere recordings of compositions by Christopher von Deylen (aka Schiller) and Chilly Gonzales.