Lunchtime Recitals: Summer 2006
Elena Rikkonen: 2 August
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Programme
Elena was born in 1979 in Murmansk in the north of Russia. She started learning the piano at the age of six in Saint Petersburg. She then entered the Childrens' School of Arts to learn to play the flute and the piano. She has been interested in the organ since childhood, but at that time it was almost an unreal dream to play as churches were closed in the former USSR. Only since the early 90s has it been legal to attend church. However, when Elena was 15 she began private organ lessons and took up the post of organist in the Finnish Lutheran parish near St Petersburg. She studied at the Mussorgsky Music College 1996–2000, graduating cum laude in musicology, piano and organ. She continued her studies in these subjects at the Rimsky-Korsakov State Conservatoire, and since 2002 has also been an organ student of Prof Kari Jussila at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, dividing her time between St Petersburg and Helsinki. Her Master’s thesis is on the music of Maurice Duruflé. |
