B I O G R A P H Y

Miguel Angel Scebba is today one of the most solid, competent, and profound artists active. He can be called a complete musician: a virtuoso pianist known for breathtaking interpretations and rare eloquence. Scebba is also a remarkable music educator and a prolific composer. His deep love and complete dedication to music are present in the intensity and passion of his pianism, in the generosity of his teaching, and in the profound emotion that springs from his symphonies, in a full commitment to every note played, composed, or taught. After more than six decades breathing and living music, Scebba transformed from a virtuoso into a great master, in a long and fruitful career that continues to grow and flourish.

Miguel Angel Scebba has a vast repertoire, dominated by works from the Romantic period and Russian composers. It includes cycles such as Beethoven’s 32 sonatas, and his orchestral repertoire centers around fifty concertos.

He was born in Buenos Aires, into an Italian family of great culture; his father was a philosopher and violinist, and his mother was a dancer at the Colón Theater and a literature teacher.

Scebba began his musical studies in Argentina. He learned to play violin at age four with his father and piano at five with the Slovenian pianist Anton Soler Biljenski, who exerted a decisive influence during the long years he was his teacher. At nine, he began studying counterpoint and composition with the great opera composer Alfredo Schiuma, who declared: “Scebba is one in a thousand.”

Scebba’s life has been surrounded by legends, and he has himself become a legend as a representative of the glorious old Russian piano school. He is today considered as such in many musical circles in Russia and Eastern European countries. His first teacher, Biljenski, was one of the brilliant students of George (Yury) Lalewizc, a disciple of the legendary Anna Essipova in Saint Petersburg. The RCD label from Prague, Czech Republic, has recently launched a series dedicated to honoring the memory of one of the greatest names of the Saint Petersburg school, Vladimir Nilsen, and has scheduled a series of CDs by M. A. Scebba as a remarkable continuator of that tradition. tradition. His recording of Schumann’s Sonata Op. 22 was compared by the “Folha de São Paulo” to that of the famous Sviatoslav Richter.

At 20 years old, Scebba left Argentina and continued his studies at the Kiev Conservatory with maestro Valery Sagaidachny and in Saint Petersburg with the aforementioned pianist and professor Vladimir Nielsen. Finally, he spent two more years studying at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow under the guidance of professor Vladimir Natanson.

Scebba completed his studies in Moscow with such distinction that he immediately joined the roster of the USSR state concert company (Gosconcert), with which he toured extensively throughout the former Soviet Union during the 1980s. In the following years, he expanded his activity to Western Europe, Latin America, and the United States. Annually, he performs extensive recital and orchestral concert tours in most countries of Western and Eastern Europe. Between 2000 and 2019, he performed recitals and orchestral concerts from Spain to Siberia.

The newspaper La Nación (Buenos Aires) describes Miguel Angel Scebba as “one of the most important Argentine pianists.” His performances at the Colón Theater were highlighted by the Buenos Aires critics, playing the first piano part in Bartók’s Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion at the festival dedicated to the Hungarian composer in 2004, as well as his memorable rendition of Chopin’s Concerto No. 2 with the Buenos Aires Philharmonic. He has also performed with important orchestras such as the Kiev Conservatory Orchestra (Ukraine), Buenos Aires Philharmonic, Crimean Symphony Orchestra (Russia), OSBA (Bahia Symphony Orchestra), OSUFBA (Federal University of Bahia Symphony Orchestra), the Symphony Orchestras of Mar del Plata, San Juan, Mendoza (Argentina), Concepción, La Serena, and Temuco (Chile), Curitiba (Brazil), Havana (Cuba). With the Tübingen Philharmonic (Germany), he toured extensively in several cities in Germany and Switzerland. Among the conductors he has collaborated with as a soloist are Pedro Ignacio Calderón, Enrique Ricci, Joachim Harder, Guillermo Becerra, Alexander Dolinsky, Nicolás Pasquet, Alexey Izmirliev, Nicolás Rauss, Javier Logioia, Jorge López Marín, David Handel, Lior Shambadal, Jorge Fontenla, Benoit Renard, Alberto Merenzon, Lutero Rodrigues, Carlos Prazeres, Igor Manasherov, Arman Tigranian, Yana Anenkova, among others.

Between 2023 and 2024, he performed in numerous Russian cities, at the Tchaikovsky Festival and at the “Gran Summer Festival Sirius,” the most important musical event in Russia.

In the chamber music genre, he performed with prestigious Argentine, Brazilian, European, Russian, and American musicians. Scebba is also a prolific composer: Eight symphonies, as well as numerous chamber works, organ, and vocal pieces, many of which have been performed and recorded in France, Russia, Brazil, and Uruguay. His... His training as a composer also began in childhood and was completed under the guidance of Aram Khachaturian in Moscow.

From 1990 to 2017, he was a full professor of piano at the National University of San Juan – Argentina and Professor of the Piano Master’s program at the National University of Colombia (Bogotá). He was a collaborator at UFBA.

He has been a visiting professor or artist-in-residence at about 20 educational institutions across America, Europe, and Russia.

He is frequently invited as a jury member in prestigious international competitions. Currently, he gives private lessons and is invited to teach courses on various piano topics, especially on the Russian piano school, from beginner to advanced technique and interpretation. His students often win awards in international competitions.