Anatol Ugorski

Anatol Ugorski (in Russian: Анатолий Угорский, born 28 September 1942 in Rubtsovsk, Siberia) is a classical pianist of Russian origin, living in Germany.

Anatol Ugorski, born in a poor background, is the eldest of five children. As early as 1945, his parents moved to Leningrad. He was at first in a school where he sang and played the xylophone. From his six years, he succeeded the selection at the entrance to the school of music of Saint Petersburg Conservatory where he studied until 1960. He was subsequently admitted to the Conservatory of Leningrad in the piano class of Najda Gouloubovskaia with whom he worked until 1965. He was a student and attracted attention through the interpretation of avant-garde pieces: abandoning the repertoire traditionally devoted to Russian pianists, he created in the USSR some of the works of controversial Western composers such as Arnold Schönberg (Pierrot Lunaire), Alban Berg, Olivier Messiaen and Pierre Boulez, assisted by his wife, musicologist Maja Elik.

In 1968, he won the third prize of the George Enescu International Piano Competition. During a tour of concerts in Leningrad by Pierre Boulez in autumn 1968, in a period of relative cultural openness (shortly after the Prague Spring, and the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops), the enthusiastic applause of Ugorski were interpreted as a political manifestation - he worked with the conductor thirty years later. He was summoned by the Rectorate and considered with suspicion as politically unreliable, because of his passion for Western contemporary music and his origins. His career was stopped for more than ten years. He was confined to an accompanying post of the Young Pioneers choir, which could only performed in the Soviet bloc and for remote provincial schoolchildren, or private concerts, but always with full attendance.

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