The first "YouTube Star" of classical music Valentina Lisitsa will play in Ankara for the first time as part of Ankara Piano Festival on October 28, 2014.

Piano: Valentina Lisitsa  

Organised by Altus Arts & Culture, Ankara Piano Festival is welcoming Valentina Lisitsa, very well known with her dazzling virtuosity and unique musicality.

Valentina Lisitsa is not only the first “YouTube Star" of classical music; more importantly, she is the first classical artist to have converted her internet success into a global concert career in the principal venues of Europe, the USA, South America and Asia. Posting her first video on the internet platform YouTube in 2007, her channel now records over 56 million clicks and has almost 90,000 subscribers.

With her multi-faceted playing described as "dazzling", Valentina Lisitsa is at ease in a vast repertoire ranging from Bach and Mozart to Shostakovich and Bernstein. Her orchestral repertoire alone includes more than forty concerti. She admits to having a special affinity for the music of Rachmaninoff and Beethoven and continues to add to her vast repertoire each season. 

Valentina Lisitsa was born in Kiev, Ukraine and began playing the piano at the age of three, performing her first solo recital a year later. She gained a place at the Lysenko Music School for Gifted Children and later studied at the Kiev Conservatory under Ludmilla Tsvierko. In 1991 she won the first prize in The Murray Dranoff Two Piano Competition together with Alexei Kuznetsoff. 

Valentina Lisitsa is one of the most watched classical musicians on the Web, using digital innovation to champion classical music and performance. She has performed in venues around the world, including Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, and the Musikverein. The concert which is scheduled for Tuesday the 28th of October at METU CCC is one of the concerts not to be missed!