Diego Idarraga’s piano recital at the Art Gallery of NSW, in this fifth instalment Diego performs Serguei Prokofiev’s Sonata op. 28 in A minor.

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DIEGO IDARRAGA

He was born in Bogota, Colombia, He started to play the piano at the age of 17 under the tutelage of Colombian teacher Piedad Rosas, then with Dr. Sergei Sitchkov,. After finishing his bachelor in music in his homeland, he studied with Ludmilla Weber, and Antonio Carbonell.
Diego has played as soloist and as a member of chamber ensembles in many important auditoriums in Bogota such as Leon de Greiff Auditorium, National Museum Auditorium/
He was semi-finalist in the Southern Highlands International Piano Competition at Bowral in 2007, and has played Soloist Recitals at the Wollongong Conservatorium Auditorium, Salvation Army’s Auditorium, Wesley Uniting Church at Wollongong as well as at St. Andrew’s Cathedral and the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the Verbruggen Hall at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in Sydney.
His orchestral experience includes the performance of Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy in with his University’s Symphonic Orchestra, Saint-saens’ “Carnival of the Animals” with the Wollongong Symphony Orchestra and Stravinsky’s “Petrushka” with the Sydney Youth Orchestra.
He has participated in masterclasses with re known pianists such as Mark Setltzer, Leonid Kuzmin, Walter Blankenheim.
He is currently a piano teacher at the Australian Institute of Music’s Open Academy and at Lane Cove Music and Cultural Center and is doing a Masters in Piano Performance at the Australian Institute of Music with Brenda Jones.

Prokofiev was a Russian composer, conductor and pianist considered to be one of the greatest Russian composers of the 20th century along with Stravinsky and Shostakovich. He wrote his first composition at the age of five, and his first opera at the age of nine. He was a prominent composer, often regarded as rebel because of his avant-garde style compositions. In 1914 he incursioned into the Ballet after being commissioned by Daghilev; when his first ballet was premiered in 1921 in Paris it was a big success, being praised by artists as Jean Cocteau, Stravinsky and Ravel. He composed several symphonies, operas, suites, Piano Sonatas and concertos. His style emphasized in the use of dissonance, strong musical structuring and clever melodic construction. At the end of his life as many other composers from the soviet era, his live was tormented by the oppressive regime who controlled every aspects of their lives through threatening and punishment, nevertheless, Prokofiev will be always remembered as one of the best composers from the 20th century.