Anatol Ugorski

(1942-2023)

Classical pianist

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Anatol Ugorski (Russian: Анатолий Зальманович Угорский, Anatoliy Zal'manovich Ugorskiy, 28 September 1942 – 5 September 2023) was a Russian-born German classical pianist and academic teacher. He studied at the Leningrad Conservatory, and played works by composers such as Schoenberg, Alban Berg, Olivier Messiaen and Pierre Boulez rather than the usual repertoire for Russian pianists. An incident at a concert of Boulez in 1968 made Soviet authorities doubt his political reliability, and they largely interrupted his career for more than ten years. In 1982, he became professor at the Leningrad Conservatory. When his daughter suffered antisemitic harassment in 1990, the family fled to East Berlin, where they lived in a refugee camp for several months. Irene Dische managed to arrange for him to record Beethoven's Diabelli Variations for Deutsche Grammophon in 1991, which launched a career of performing and recording. He became professor of the Hochschule für Musik Detmold, remaining in the post until 2007.