Vladimir Stoupel

Born on May 10, 1962, in the former Soviet Union, pianist Vladimir Stoupel trained under Lazar Berman and embodies the storied Russian virtuoso lineage while also exploring contemporary repertoire and rarely performed scores, both at the keyboard and, with growing frequency, on the podium. His mother, pianist Rimma Bobritskaya, introduced him to the instrument at age three; by twelve he had already appeared in public, delivering Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in B flat minor, Op. 23, on the stage of the Great Hall at the Moscow Conservatory. There he pursued piano studies with Yevgeny Malinin and conducting lessons with Gennady Rozhdestvensky before completing five years of private instruction with Berman. In 1984 he relocated to Paris and subsequently acquired French citizenship. Two years later he earned a top award at the Concours Internationale d’Exécution Musicale in Geneva. Stoupel has since maintained an international solo career, appearing as concerto soloist throughout Europe, Russia, and the United States with such ensembles as the Russian National Orchestra, the Berliner Philharmoniker, and the Staatskapelle Weimar. His first recording, issued in 1996 on the EDA label, presented the futurist collection The Life of the Machines. An active chamber musician, he has collaborated with violinists Judith Ingolfsson—his wife—and Mark Peskanov, cellist Peter Bruns, and the Robert Schumann String Quartet, and has performed in the New York Philharmonic’s chamber series at Merkin and Avery Fisher Halls. On the podium he has directed the Philharmonie Neubrandenburg, the Nîmes Chamber Orchestra, and the Berlin Kammerphilharmonie, among others, and led the first performance of Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s opera Pozdravlyayem! outside Russia, given in its German translation, Wir gratulieren! (“We Congratulate You!”). In 2008 he recorded the complete Scriabin piano sonatas for Audite, having committed the cycle to memory in his youth. Subsequent releases on Accentus explored French repertoire in depth. He conducted Wir gratulieren! again in 2020, this time with the Kammerakademie Potsdam for Oehms Classics. In 2021 Stoupel and Ingolfsson presented a joint recital devoted to Karol Rathaus, Heinz Tiessen, and Paul Arma; the duo returned to Oehms Classics in 2024 with an album of works by Rebecca Clarke.