Biography
Pianist Anna Shelest has committed to disc Ukrainian and Russian repertoire, pieces by Amy Beach, and additional works. Major North American orchestras have engaged her as concerto soloist.
Born Anna Polusmiak in 1983 in Kharkiv, Ukraine—then known as Kharkov in the Soviet Union—she was the stepdaughter of pianist and educator Sergei Polusmiak, from whom both she and her future husband Dmitri Shelest received lessons. At the age of six she entered the Special Music School for Gifted Children in Kharkiv. Recognition arrived swiftly inside and outside Ukraine when she became the youngest prize-winner in the history of Poland’s Milosz Magin International Piano Competition, an achievement that opened the way for an appearance at age eleven at UNESCO headquarters in Paris. The next year Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in F sharp minor, Op. 1, served as the vehicle for her debut with the Kharkiv Symphony Orchestra. In the late 1990s she enrolled at Northern Kentucky University near Cincinnati, where Sergei Polusmiak served on the faculty, and she subsequently acquired U.S. citizenship. Her first recording appeared in 2001 on the album The Piano Artistry of Anna Polusmiak, Dmitri Shelest & Anna Sysun. She continued her training at the Juilliard School in Manhattan, New York, studying with Jerome Lowenthal and completing a master’s degree.
Shelest and her husband settled in New York, where she has appeared in such prominent venues as Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall. Recitals have also taken her to the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., the Konzerthaus in Vienna, and the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. Concerto engagements have linked her with leading ensembles throughout North America and Eastern Europe, among them the Montreal Symphony, the Cincinnati Symphony under Paavo Järvi, and the Estonian National Symphony. Several discs for the Sorel Classics label include Ukrainian Rhapsody, recorded with Dmitri Shelest and issued in 2018. That same year she launched a recorded cycle of Anton Rubinstein’s piano concertos with conductor Neeme Järvi and The Orchestra Now; further installments featured Järvi and the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, while the final volume, containing Rubinstein’s first two concertos, was released on the Music & Arts label in 2023.
Born Anna Polusmiak in 1983 in Kharkiv, Ukraine—then known as Kharkov in the Soviet Union—she was the stepdaughter of pianist and educator Sergei Polusmiak, from whom both she and her future husband Dmitri Shelest received lessons. At the age of six she entered the Special Music School for Gifted Children in Kharkiv. Recognition arrived swiftly inside and outside Ukraine when she became the youngest prize-winner in the history of Poland’s Milosz Magin International Piano Competition, an achievement that opened the way for an appearance at age eleven at UNESCO headquarters in Paris. The next year Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in F sharp minor, Op. 1, served as the vehicle for her debut with the Kharkiv Symphony Orchestra. In the late 1990s she enrolled at Northern Kentucky University near Cincinnati, where Sergei Polusmiak served on the faculty, and she subsequently acquired U.S. citizenship. Her first recording appeared in 2001 on the album The Piano Artistry of Anna Polusmiak, Dmitri Shelest & Anna Sysun. She continued her training at the Juilliard School in Manhattan, New York, studying with Jerome Lowenthal and completing a master’s degree.
Shelest and her husband settled in New York, where she has appeared in such prominent venues as Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall. Recitals have also taken her to the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., the Konzerthaus in Vienna, and the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. Concerto engagements have linked her with leading ensembles throughout North America and Eastern Europe, among them the Montreal Symphony, the Cincinnati Symphony under Paavo Järvi, and the Estonian National Symphony. Several discs for the Sorel Classics label include Ukrainian Rhapsody, recorded with Dmitri Shelest and issued in 2018. That same year she launched a recorded cycle of Anton Rubinstein’s piano concertos with conductor Neeme Järvi and The Orchestra Now; further installments featured Järvi and the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, while the final volume, containing Rubinstein’s first two concertos, was released on the Music & Arts label in 2023.
Albums
Donna Voce
2019
Rubinstein: Piano Concertos Nos. 3 & 5
2019
Ukrainian Rhapsody
2018
Prokofiev: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 2
2016
Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition
2016
Spirit & Romance
2014
Live
