Artist Spotlight: Dmitri Shteinberg

A native of Moscow, Dmitri Shteinberg holds a Doctorate in piano performance from the Manhattan School of Music, and is currently Associate Professor of piano and department chair at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. His performance credentials include Jerusalem Symphony, The Italian Filarmonica Marchigiana, Israel Chamber Orchestra, Israel Camerata Orchestra and Porto National Symphony under the batons of Massimo Pradella, Roger Nierenberg, Florin Totan and David Shallon, among others. In the United States, he appeared with the Baton Rouge, Richmond, Charlottesville, Salisbury and Manassas symphony orchestras. Shteinberg was a guest artist at the Mostly Mozart Festival, Summit Music Festival, Music Festival of the Hamptons, the ”Oleg Kagan” Festival in Germany, Festival Aix-en-Provence in France and Open Chamber Music in Cornwall, England. Chamber music appearances include the Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, The Kimmel Center in Philadelphia, Alice Tully Hall in New York and the Saunders Theatre in Boston. 

Video: https://www.facebook.com/UNCSAMusic/videos/607376370056702/?q=uncsa%20school%20of%20music&epa=SEARCH_BOX

What or who inspired you to want to be an artist?
My parents are both musicians. My mother studied with the famed Russian pianist Maria Grinberg, and my father graduated from the studio of Piotr Bondarenko, a colleague of Oistrakh (Bondarenko taught violin in Israel after moving there in the mid-1970s).

What was your creative journey that has brought you to where you are in your career today?
All three of my teachers were Russian, but I studied with them on three different continents. From a musical perspective, this turned out to be priceless, because absorbing different – and at times clashing – attitudes towards performance and pedagogical matters is what can really make one open-minded. I will never be done learning.

What do you need as an artist today?
An educated audience. But, of course, this is very much our own job.

What creative project are you working on now?
I am still working on my graduation recital; this may sound like a joke, but I have made it a point to learn a recital-worth of new solo repertoire every year, just as I did when I was a student. It makes performing somewhat scarier, but also truer artistically, I think.

What does it mean to you to have an organization like the AICF supporting artists and culture?
For me it was as simple of being able to afford my studies. The AICF scholarship was equally crucial both at the very beginning, in 1991, when my family simply did not have money to pay for my lessons, and at the end, when I was pushing to the finish line in my DMA. Without AICF, I simply would not have had the education I do, and for that I am eternally grateful.

Artist Spotlight: Dmitri Shteinberg