Maria Lettberg – Official Homepage

Marian Lettberg, the daughter of a university professor of Russian literature and a mathematician, was born in Riga. Her instrument has ben an integral part of her life since she was seven-years-old. In fact, at the age of nine she made her first public appearance playing Beethoven’s Second Piano Concerto. Maria is Swedish and lives in Berlin.

Ms Lettberg`s talent was recognised and nurtured at an early age; she went straight from the central Latvian elite school for musically gifted children to the Petersburg Conservatory where she was able to unfold her personality as a pianist underlined by the development of her virtuoso technique, until she graduated with distinction in her concert examination.

Personal and musical considerations led her to decide against perfecting a narrow repertoire with which she might have tried to make a name for herself in the competitive arena. Instead, Maria made good use of the freedom which scholarships afforded her to develop musically, participating in further courses of study, master classes and individual programmes (Royal College in Stockholm; Sibelius Academy, Helsinki). In this way she was able to widen her repertoire and, above all, to deepen her musical interests. Important teachers included Tatjana Zagorovskaja, Andrej Gavrilov, Paul Badura-Skoda, Menachem Pressler, Emanuel Krasovsky, Roland Pöntinen und Matti Raekallio.

Her most important achievement so far has been – besides solo recitals, orchestra and chamber music performances, and radio and television programmes - the recording, in 2007, of the complete Solo-Piano works of Alexander Scriabin. Maria Lettberg became first known to a larger public because of her recordings (in cooperation with Deutschlandfunk Kultur and Capriccio) and related concerts of Scriabin`s Piano-Solos.

The positive experience in the intensive exploration of Scriabin`s work motivated Maria Lettberg, in her recordings, to continue discovering and creatively reviving important composers who interested her. Following this credo Ms Lettberg has recorded Alfred Schnittke`s Piano Concertos in collaboration with Ewa Kupiec and the Radio Symphony Orchestra Berlin conducted by Frank Strobel as well as the Petersen Quartet. Then came recordings of the Finnish composer Erkki Melartin. Under the title "The enchanted Garden" she has explored the world of Russian fairytales musically, and, furthermore, she has created a link between compositions of Messiaen, Liszt, Kelkel, Banter and the musical legacy of Alexander Scriabin.

Her most recent CD, Zara Levina, The Piano Concertos, has brought Maria Lettberg a nomination for a Grammy 2018 in the category "Best Classical Instrumental Solo".

The fresh impulses generated by her recordings have enriched Maria Lettberg`s repertoire. A personal selection of favoured composers such as Brahms, Schumann, Liszt and Chopin, but also Ravel and Debussy, and Schnittke and on the other hand Bach – and, of course, Scriabin - make for a very interesting virtuoso and musically sensitive concert programme. At times, her concerts can also have an experimental character as in her "Mysterium" project in which she approached Alexander Skrjabin´s ideas of synesthesia.