Nina Svetlanova

Who is Nina Svetlanova?

Nina Svetlanova is a Russian-American concert pianist and educator. She became a naturalized US citizen in 1983. She has been a professor of piano at New York's Manhattan School of Music and Mannes College of Music since the late 1970s and is a highly sought-after pedagogue, and many of her students are well-known pianists and international competition winners. Before her teaching career, she was known as an excellent concert pianist and collaborative artist, being the main pianist to work with famous Armenian mezzo-soprano Zara Dolukhanova.

Svetlanova graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in the class of Heinrich Neuhaus, who she studied with from the age of 16 to 23, during a seven-year period. Prior to that she had been a student of Grigory Kogan and Sofia Kogan at the Gnesin Music College, where she studied since the age of five.

Upon graduation from Moscow Conservatory, she became Opera Konzertmeister in the famous Bolshoi Theatre. Later she became a pianist in the official roster of the Moscow Philharmonic Concert Association, called Moskonzert, which was the main bureau responsible for all concerts in the USSR. As a Moskonzert pianist Svetlanova toured the whole world playing with all kinds of instrumentalists and ensembles, and working closely with Zara Dolukhanova. She was once married to famous conductor Evgeny Svetlanov.