Early life and career

Born 29 April 1945 to a Jewish family in Odessa

Odessa

Odessa or Odesa is the administrative center of the Odessa Oblast located in southern Ukraine. The city is a major seaport located on the northwest shore of the Black Sea and the fourth largest city in Ukraine with a population of 1,029,000 .The predecessor of Odessa, a small Tatar settlement,...

, Oleg Maisenberg received his first piano lessons from his mother at the age of five. He completed his studies at the Central Music School Kishinev and at the Gnessin Institute in Moscow with Professor Jocheles. In 1967 he won the second prize at the "International Schubert

Franz Schubert

Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...

 Competition" in Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

, where in the same year he won the first prize in the competition "Music of the 20th Century". From 1971 to 1980 he appeared regularly with the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra

Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra

The Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra is an orchestra based in Moscow, Russia. It was founded in 1951 by Samuil Samosud, as the Moscow Youth Orchestra for young and inexperienced musicians, acquiring its current name in 1953...

 and other renowned orchestras of the former Soviet Union.

Move to Vienna and international career

In 1981 Oleg Maisenberg emigrated to Vienna. Since then he has appeared with the Israel Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra

Philadelphia Orchestra

The Philadelphia Orchestra is a symphony orchestra based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States. One of the "Big Five" American orchestras, it was founded in 1900...

, the London Symphony Orchestra

London Symphony Orchestra

The London Symphony Orchestra is a major orchestra of the United Kingdom, as well as one of the best-known orchestras in the world. Since 1982, the LSO has been based in London's Barbican Centre.-History:...

, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra

Vienna Symphony Orchestra

-History:In 1900, Ferdinand Löwe founded the orchestra as the Wiener Concertverein . In 1913 it moved into the Konzerthaus, Vienna. In 1919 it merged with the Tonkünstler Orchestra. In 1933 it acquired its current name...

, the Berlin Philharmonic, with the conductors Christoph von Dohnányi

Christoph von Dohnányi

Christoph von Dohnányi is a German conductor of Hungarian ancestry.- Youth and World War II :Dohnányi was born in Berlin, Germany to jurist Hans von Dohnányi and Christine Bonhoeffer. His uncle on his mother's side was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran pastor and theologian/ethicist...

, Zubin Mehta

Zubin Mehta

Zubin Mehta is an Indian conductor of western classical music. He is the Music Director for Life of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.-Biography:...

, Eugene Ormandy

Eugene Ormandy

Eugene Ormandy was a Hungarian-born conductor and violinist.-Early life:Born Jenő Blau in Budapest, Hungary, Ormandy began studying violin at the Royal National Hungarian Academy of Music at the age of five...

, Herbert Blomstedt

Herbert Blomstedt

Herbert Blomstedt is a Swedish conductor.Herbert Blomstedt was born in Springfield, Massachusetts and two years after his birth, his Swedish parents moved the family back to their country of origin...

, Stanisław Skrowaczewski, Neeme Järvi

Neeme Järvi

Neeme Järvi is an Estonian-born conductor.-Early life:Järvi studied music first in Tallinn, and later in Leningrad at the Leningrad Conservatory under Yevgeny Mravinsky, and Nikolai Rabinovich, among others...

, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos

Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos

Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos is a Spanish conductor and composer.Frühbeck studied violin, piano, and composition at the conservatories of Bilbao and Madrid...

, Georges Prêtre

Georges Prêtre

- Biography :He was born in Waziers , and attended the Douai Conservatory and then studied harmony under Maurice Duruflé and conducting under André Cluytens among others at the Conservatoire de Paris. Amongst his early musical interests were jazz and trumpet. After graduating, he conducted in a...

, Alain Lombard, Michel Plasson

Michel Plasson

Michel Plasson is a French conductor.Plasson was a student of Lazare Lévy at the Conservatoire de Paris. In 1962, he was a prize-winner at the International Besançon Competition for Young Conductors. He studied briefly in the United States, including time with Charles Münch...

, Nikolaus Harnoncourt

Nikolaus Harnoncourt

Nikolaus Harnoncourt is an Austrian conductor, particularly known for his historically informed performances of music from the Classical era and earlier. Starting out as a classical cellist, he founded his own period instrument ensemble in the 1950s, and became a pioneer of the Early Music movement...

, Vladimir Fedosejev, and Esa-Pekka Salonen

Esa-Pekka Salonen

Esa-Pekka Salonen is a Finnish orchestral conductor and composer. He is currently Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor of the Philharmonia Orchestra in London and Conductor Laureate of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.-Early career:...

.

Maisenberg frequently appears with chamber orchestras such as the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra

The Orpheus Chamber Orchestra is a Grammy Award-winning classical music chamber orchestra based in New York City. It is known for its collaborative leadership style in which the musicians, not a conductor, interpret the score....

 New York, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, the Wiener Virtuosen (members of the Vienna Philharmonic), and the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra.

He has devoted much of his time to chamber music

Chamber music

Chamber music is a form of classical music, written for a small group of instruments which traditionally could be accommodated in a palace chamber. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers with one performer to a part...

, collaborating with such artists as Hermann Prey

Hermann Prey

Hermann Prey was a German lyric baritone. He is most famous for lieder and for light comic baritone roles in opera.-Biography:...

, Robert Holl, Heinz Holliger

Heinz Holliger

Heinz Holliger Heinz Holliger Heinz Holliger (born 21 May 1939 is a Swiss oboist, composer and conductor.-Biography:He was born in Langenthal, Switzerland, and began his musical education at the conservatories of Bern and Basel. He studied composition with Sándor Veress and Pierre Boulez...

, Sabine Meyer

Sabine Meyer

Sabine Meyer is a German classical clarinetist.-Biography:Meyer began playing the clarinet at an early age. Her first teacher was her father, also a clarinetist...

, András Schiff

András Schiff

András Schiff is a Hungarian-born British classical pianist, who has won a number of awards including the Grammy and made numerous recordings.- Biography :...

, Renaud und Gautier Capucon. His continuing collaboration with the violinist Gidon Kremer

Gidon Kremer

Gidon Kremer is a Latvian violinist and conductor. In 1980 he left the USSR and settled in Germany.-Biography:Kremer was born in Riga to parents of German-Jewish and Latvian-Swedish origins. He began playing the violin at the age of four, receiving instruction from his father and his grandfather,...

 commenced during his early years in Russia.

Maisenberg has appeared at most of the major festival venues in Salzburg

Salzburg

-Population development:In 1935, the population significantly increased when Salzburg absorbed adjacent municipalities. After World War II, numerous refugees found a new home in the city. New residential space was created for American soldiers of the postwar Occupation, and could be used for...

, Vienna, Lockenhaus, Lucerne

Lucerne

Lucerne is a city in north-central Switzerland, in the German-speaking portion of that country. Lucerne is the capital of the Canton of Lucerne and the capital of the district of the same name. With a population of about 76,200 people, Lucerne is the most populous city in Central Switzerland, and...

, Berlin, Florence

Florence

Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....

, Edinburgh

Edinburgh

Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...

, Piano Festival Ruhr and Sviatoslav Richter Festival in Moscow, among others, and has performed as a recitalist throughout the world. His repertoire encompasses all stylistic epochs - his particular preference being the music of the 19th century.

Recordings

Maisenberg has participated in numerous recordings and TV productions including LPs and CDs with compositions by Schubert, Schumann

Robert Schumann

Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....

, Liszt

Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...

, Rachmaninov

Sergei Rachmaninoff

Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music...

, Scriabin

Alexander Scriabin

Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin was a Russian composer and pianist who initially developed a lyrical and idiosyncratic tonal language inspired by the music of Frédéric Chopin. Quite independent of the innovations of Arnold Schoenberg, Scriabin developed an increasingly atonal musical system,...

, Stravinsky

Igor Stravinsky

Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....

, Berg

Alban Berg

Alban Maria Johannes Berg was an Austrian composer. He was a member of the Second Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and produced compositions that combined Mahlerian Romanticism with a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.-Early life:Berg was born in...

, Webern

Anton Webern

Anton Webern was an Austrian composer and conductor. He was a member of the Second Viennese School. As a student and significant follower of Arnold Schoenberg, he became one of the best-known exponents of the twelve-tone technique; in addition, his innovations regarding schematic organization of...

, Schönberg

Arnold Schoenberg

Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...

, and Darius Milhaud

Darius Milhaud

Darius Milhaud was a French composer and teacher. He was a member of Les Six—also known as The Group of Six—and one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. His compositions are influenced by jazz and make use of polytonality...

 have appeared under the Orfeo, Harmonia Mundi, Teldec and Deutsche Grammophon

Deutsche Grammophon

Deutsche Grammophon is a German classical record label which was the foundation of the future corporation to be known as PolyGram. It is now part of Universal Music Group since its acquisition and absorption of PolyGram in 1999, and it is also UMG's oldest active label...

 labels, and recordings in the field of chamber music have been released by ECM, Preiser Records and the Philips labels.

One unique event in Maisenberg's career was his 12 concert recital series at the Wiener Konzerthaus in the 1994/95 season in which each concert was dedicated to a different composer. A commemorative edition of five CDs, which include selections of these live performances, was issued by the Wiener Konzerthaus and more recently on the Glissando label.

Teaching and adjudication

Between 1985 and 1998 Oleg Maisenberg was Professor of Piano at the Musikhochschule in Stuttgart. As of 2008 he is listed as a Professor in the Institute of Keyboard Instruments (Tasteninstrumente) at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna. He gives master classes on a regular basis and acts as an adjudicator at various international competitions (Clara Haskil - Vevey, Géza Anda

Concours Géza Anda

The Concours Géza Anda is a triennial international piano competition that takes place every three years in Zürich, Switzerland. It was founded in memory of the late Hungarian pianist Géza Anda by his widow Hortense Anda-Bührle. The purpose of the competition is to discover and promote young...

 - Zurich, ARD - Munich

ARD International Music Competition

The ARD International Music Competition is the largest international classical music competition in Germany. It is held once a year in Munich.-History:...

). Former students include Till Fellner

Till Fellner

- Biography :Pianist Till Fellner was born in Vienna and studied at the Konservatorium der Stadt Wien with Helene Sedo-Stadler, and subsequently with Alfred Brendel, Meira Farkas, Oleg Maisenberg and Claus-Christian Schuster. He won first prize in the Clara Haskil International Piano Competition...

 and Richard Hyung-ki Joo

Richard Hyung-ki Joo

British-Korean pianist, composer, and creator and star of “Igudesman & Joo: A Little Nightmare Music”. Billy Joel chose Joo to arrange and record his classical piano pieces for the album Fantasies & Delusions. It was recorded at the Mozart-Hall, Vienna Konzerthaus, and reached the No...

.

Honours

In April 1995 Oleg Maisenberg was awarded the title of "Honorary Member" of the Wiener Konzerthaus Society.

Federal Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel awarded the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art to Oleg Maisenberg in 2005.