Oxana Yablonskaya

Oxana Yablonskaya was born in 1938 in Moscow

Yablonskaya was born in Moscow on December 6, 1938, to a Jewish family. As a child she studied with Anaida Sumbatyan at the Moscow Central School for gifted music students.

She went on to the Moscow Conservatory, where she studied with Aleksandr Goldenweiser and Dmitry Bashkirov. She graduated in 1965 and joined its piano faculty. She won prizes at the Long-Thibaud competition in 1963, in Rio de Janeiro in 1965 and at the Beethoven competition in Vienna in 1969.

She performed across the USSR and recorded for Melodiya, but the Soviet government did not let her accept engagements in the West. In 1975 she applied to emigrate to the United States, was fired from the conservatory and was barred from Soviet concert halls. After a petition signed by American artists and senators, she reached New York in 1977 and gave a recital at Carnegie Hall.

She taught piano at the Juilliard School for more than 30 years, until 2009, and toured and recorded around the world. She received the Grand Prix du Disque from the Liszt Society in Budapest.

She became an Israeli citizen in 2014. She lives in Ramat Gan, teaches at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, and performs with her son, the cellist Dmitry Yablonsky.