Michael Gatonska


Igor Lovchinsky 

This promises to be a concert of premieres and debuts. The yet unknown winner of the Chopin Competition will perform Chopin, and there will also be a new composition by Connecticut composer Michael Gatonska.

Mostly Chopin


May 21, 8 PM • Belding Theatre, Bushnell, Hartford
May 23  • Kosciuszko Foundation, New York, NY

Concert Program:

- Mozart: Symphony No. 40, 
- Chopin: Piano Concerto no 1 in E-minor
- Gatonska: "Sketches in the Sand" (World Premiere)

At 19 years of age, Igor Lovchinsky has already been the laureate of numerous prestigious competitions on the national and international levels. His primary awards have included first prizes at the 2002 Eastman Young Artists International Piano Competition and most recently, the 2003 Kosciuszko Chopin Competition held in New York City.  As winner, Mr. Lovchinsky was featured in an all-Chopin concert at the Chopin Memorial in Lazienki Park in Warsaw, Poland and gave Kosciuszko sponsored recitals in New York City, Chicago, Houston, Boston, and other American cities.  In addition to the grand prize, he was awarded the Jan Gorbaty Memorial Prize for the best performance of Chopin.

In 1998, Mr. Lovchinsky was featured in a gala concert at Carnegie Hall as a winner of the International Festival “Young Virtuosos” and later that year, performed Chopin’s Piano Concerto in E Minor with the Columbus Symphony Orchestra as winner of the CSO Concerto Competition.  In 2001 and 2002, he was awarded a scholarship by the Chopin Foundation of the United States.

Lovchinsky has performed in the masterclasses of Emanuel Ax, Robert MacDonald, Jon Kimura Parker, Anton Kuerti, and Sergei Babayan and participated in several summer music festivals including California Summer Music, International School for Musical Arts, and ARIA International Summer Academy.  This summer, he will attend the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, California.

Born in Kazan, Russia in 1984, Igor Lovchinsky began his studies at the Kazan Special Music School for Gifted Children and after his immigration to the United States in 1994, became a student of Nina Polonsky.  Since 2000, he studied with Steven Glaser, Professor of Piano at The Ohio State University.  In the Fall of 2003, he entered the Juilliard School on full scholarship and begin his studies in the class of the renowned pianist and pedagogue, Jerome Lowenthal. 

Michael Gatonska lives in East Hartford, CT. Studied at Manhattanville College, the Manhattan School of Music, and the Academy of Music in Krakow, Poland. He studied composition with K. Penderecki, Z. Bujarski, M. Stachowski, and Elias Tanenbaum. Awards received for his compositions have included two ASCAP Young Composer Awards, Chicago Symphony First Hearing Award, Minnesota Orchestra Reading/Composer Institute Award, the Dimitri Mitropoulis International Composition Competition. He has recently been commissioned by SONYC (String Orchestra New York City), and the CT Commission on the Arts to compose music for the electric cellist Jeffrey Krieger.