Olga Magidenko comes from a Russian family of musicians. At age six, she began playing the piano and at the same time she started to compose like her father, Mikhail Magidenko. In the former Soviet Union, he was a renowned composer who wrote many operas in particular. Her mother was a pianist. 6-years-old Olga wrote her first children’s songs. At eleven, she decided to continue seriously with composition and she attended to a composition working group at her school. This went on consistently until she studied at the Conservatory composition with Aram Khachaturian. “Composing is my language and that is without limits. That is not Turkish or Russian, but my very own universal and, ultimately, my main language”,confesses Olga Magidenko. In 1991, she worked as a composer “Artist in Residence” of the Stetson University Deland, Florida. In the same year she came to Heidelberg on the recommendation of Sofia Gubaidulina, where her works have been presented for the first time in Germany at the New Music Festival. Since 1994, the composer lives in Sandhausen near Heidelberg.
“I feel more a romantic than a modern composer”, says Olga. And in her scores you will find instructions as sentimental or nostalgico.Aural sensuality and a deep mysticism are characteristic of her style, which captures with its strong sense of psychological finesse. The concentration of the material and concise form structures give the music great openness and transparency. It is a sometimes playful, sometimes of emotional depth embossed dealing with echoes of Russian folklore, which opens outrageous music rooms within a dramatic to high emotional context. The majority of her works are published by the publishing house Furore Verlag.
