Einav Yarden, piano

Pianist Einav Yarden is praised for her “…imagination and exceptionally vivid playing…Sense of immense majesty, tempered by gentleness and quiet grace” (The Washington Post, USA), and “glistening rapture…ingenious humor” (Tagesspiegel, Germany).  She has appeared as a soloist with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Berlin and Rundfunk Chor, Minnesota Symphony, Beethoven Orchester Bonn, Bucharest Philharmonic, Calgary Philharmonic, Philharmonic of Trier, Jerusalem Symphony, Plovdiv Philharmonic, the Israel Symphony Rishon Le-Zion, under conductors as Sir Neville Marriner, Aldo Ceccato, Leon Botstein, Stefan Blunier, Horia Andreescu, Mark Russell Smith, Simon Halsey, Mendi Rodan and others.

In 2013 she released her debut solo CD, ‘Oscillations’ on the label Challenge Classics. The CD received much international acclaim and was selected as CD-of-the-Month on the German piano magazine 'Piano News'. In 2016 she released her second CD on Challenge Classics, featuring six Haydn sonatas. The CD was awarded the quarterly German Record Critics’ Award (Preis der deutsche Schallplattenkritik), selected as CD-of-the-Month on ‘Piano News’ and as CD-of-the-week on NPO 4 Radio in the Netherlands and was highly praised by the press.

Among her competition prizes is the Third Prize at the 2009 International Beethoven Piano Competition in Bonn, a Prize at the 2006 Minnesota International Piano-e-Competition and the First Prize at the 2001 Aviv Competitions in Israel, where she was awarded the Guralnik Piano Prize as well as the Zilbermann Prize for best performance of a contemporary Israeli work and other competition prizes.

A passionate chamber musician, Yarden devotes herself regularly to collaborations with other musicians and she enthusiastically incorporates non-standard repertoire into her programs. In spring semester of 2016 she joined the adjunct faculty at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg, teaching chamber music. Since summer 2012 she is a collaborative pianist at Ravinia Festival’s Steans Music Institute in the USA.

In 2005 she completed four years of study with the renowned pianist Leon Fleisher at the Peabody Conservatory (Johns Hopkins University), earning a Master of Music with high honors and a Graduate Performance Diploma. Prior to that she received a Bachelor of Music with high honors from the Rubin Music Academy of the Tel Aviv University under the instruction of Prof. Emanuel Krasovsky, and her early education was with Hadassa Gonen at the Israel Conservatory Tel Aviv. Other piano guidance includes that of Elisso Virsaladze, Richard Goode and Prof. Zvi Meniker (on historical fortepianos). She is currently based in Berlin, Germany.