“Making music on the C. Bechstein grand piano is a never-ending source of inspiration. Its ability to bring every nuance to life, to capture the interplay between light and shadow in infinite colors, gives me enormous creative freedom and makes every moment at the piano a true pleasure.”
Andrei Gologan
Andrei Gologan was born in Romania into a family of non-musicians. He received his first piano lessons at the age of five and won his first competition just six months later. He began his musical training in Romania with the pianist and composer Iulian Arcadi Trofin and later continued it at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg with Pavel Gililov, where he graduated with honors in 2020. He has won prizes at numerous international piano competitions, including the Horowitz International Piano Competition - Kyiv and the Lions European Music Competition in Istanbul, and has received scholarships from renowned music academies such as the Verbier Festival Academy, the Oxford Piano Festival, the IMS Prussia Cove and the International Music Academy in the Principality of Liechtenstein. He also received important musical impulses from artists such as Daniel Barenboim, Ferenc Rados, Richard Goode, Claudio Martínez-Mehner, Gidon Kremer, Gábor Takács-Nagy, Rita Wagner and Thomas Adès, who had a lasting influence on his artistic thinking.
As a sought-after soloist, Andrei performs with orchestras such as the Camerata Salzburg, the Kiev Philharmonic Orchestra, the George Enescu Philharmonic Orchestra, the Transylvania State Philharmonic Orchestra and the Sándor Végh Chamber Orchestra. He is a regular guest at major festivals such as the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, the Mozartwoche in Salzburg, the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival, the Schwetzingen SWR Festival, the Musikdorf Ernen, the Heidelberger Frühling and the Enescu Festival in Bucharest. Further appearances have taken him to the Pierre Boulez Hall in Berlin (as part of Daniel Barenboim's Beethoven cycle), the Herkulessaal in Munich, the Wigmore Hall in London and the Berlin Philharmonie.
Sir András Schiff invited Andrei as part of his Building Bridges project, an initiative to promote outstanding young pianists, for the 2019/2020 season. The concert series included debut performances on major European stages, including the Konzerthaus Berlin, deSingel in Antwerp, the Beethoven-Haus Bonn and the Herbstgold Festival in Eisenstadt.
As a passionate chamber musician, Andrei founded the international Buzz Chamber Music Festival together with his piano duo partner Roxana Cîrciu, which they co-direct. The festival has been taking place in Obertrum am See since 2024 and aims to shed light on classical chamber music from innovative perspectives. The Buzz Chamber Music Festival is an extension of ONLINE: concerts & talks, a pandemic-related virtual concert series that Andrei launched in collaboration with Austrian television. More than 20 chamber music concerts with international artists took place.
His debut studio recording of works by Johannes Brahms will be released in fall 2025. The CD, a co-production with Deutschlandfunk Kultur and C. Bechstein, will be released on the Evidence Classics label. Since the winter semester 2024, he has been a lecturer for piano chamber music at the Freiburg University of Music.
photos © Florin Genade
