Olga Kern and Sergei Rachmaninoff

Olga Kern has brought to stages around the world some of the mix of charisma and power cultivated by pianists of the old Russian school. She has amassed a large group of recordings on Harmonia Mundi and other labels. Born Olga Pushechnikova on April 23, 1975, in Moscow, U.S.S.R., Kern had a musical ancestry that her family traced back to the circles of Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky. Both of her parents were musicians, and after hearing her mother play Chopin, she took up the piano herself at the age of five. Glamorous and naturally gifted when it came to projecting stage presen...