Galina Vracheva Urech is internationally renowned for her art of improvisation. Alongside her concert performances, she regularly demonstrates her extraordinary abilities in live shows for Austrian, Swiss and Bavarian TV and radio. She has taught at the Mozarteum University of Salzburg since 2018.
The Swiss pianist and composer with Bulgarian roots was admitted to the youth boarding school of the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow at the age of 14 thanks to her great talent, and subsequently continued her studies in piano and composition in Sofia and Munich.
After teaching positions at German universities, including Munich, and a guest professorship at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Kyiv, Vracheva began working with postgraduate students at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam and at Haus Marteau in Upper Franconia in 2000. In 2014, she took on an additional teaching position at the Conservatorio della Svizzera Italiana, where the world's first postgraduate certificate in the principal study “improvisation” was recently launched. She has taught at the Mozarteum University of Salzburg since 2018.
Her contributions to the programme "Wunsch:Musik" by BR Klassik and the associated live performances in Studio 2 of the Bayerischer Rundfunk are legendary, and she is also a regular guest of Oe1 and SRF Kultur. She played a special role in the events for the anniversary year 2022 of the rediscovered Swiss composer Joachim Raff; her album “Schweizerweisen”, recorded at the Mozarteum, will be released soon.
Galina Vracheva lives in Zurich and plays piano concertos from Bach to Rachmaninov with renowned orchestras; these performances often include cadenzas composed on the spot. She also likes to improvise in her solo recitals, using themes provided by the audience.