Valentina kalashnik

Valentina was born in Ukraine, she studied music at the Kiev specialist music school, and in the State Tchaikovsky Concervatoire in Kiev. Valentina has studied with Prof. Irog Ryabov and Prof. Valery Kozlov (head of jury of Horowitz Debut piano competition). She graduated from Kiev Concervatoire in 1979 with MA(Hon) as a concert pianist and piano tutor.

Valentina began her career as concertmaster and later as a piano tutor at Kiev Glier Music College (currently the Music Institute), home of the Vladimir Horowitz International Piano Competition. She was also Head of piano practice at the College Piano Department, and she lectured the history of piano performance styles.

Valentina is an inspirational and dedicated teacher, her students have been selected, taken part, and received prizes in a number of regional and international piano competitions, such as; the International Gorowitz Piano Competition, “Concertino Prague” Junior Radio Competition,  Athens’ Piano Festival and the M. Lysenko International Piano Competition in Kiev, Ukraine.

She was a member of the Association of Piano Teachers of Ukraine (Ukrainian branch of EPTA) and the Kiev Piano Methodical Board. She has also acted as a judge for several piano competitions. In 1996 Valentina was invited to teach piano at the Music Institute in Kwangu, South Korea.

Valentina has given many piano recitals in Ukraine, South Korea, and Italy, as well as here in Sheffield. Since moving to Sheffield she has provided piano master-classes at the Lindsays and Friends Series and Sheffield Piano Club. Valentina is currently teaching piano at the University of Sheffield University, Music Department to undergraduate, postgraduate, and PhD students, as well as at Sheffield Music Academy.

In recent years Valentina’s students gained high recognition, i.e. Victor Hsu won piano competition in Taiwan in 2012, Peter Marshall Russel won the final year recital prize of Sheffield University Music Department in 2014, Jonathan Cornish got Sir Thomas Beecham music scholarship for MA study at the University of Sheffield in 2015, Philip Jack won Julian Payne Prize and the Bryony Hollands Music Performance Award in 2019, in the same year SMA student David Ning performed Grieg piano concerto at Sheffield City Hall.