Rico Gulda was born in Zurich, Switzerland - the youngest son of a family of musicians. He grew up in Munich, Germany where he began piano studies with his Japanese mother Yuko at age five. With twelve he was the youngest pupil of the legendary German virtuoso Ludwig Hoffmann. Later he continued his studies at the Vienna Music Academy with Prof. Noel Flores (M.A. 1995). He attended master classes with Dimitri Bashkirov in Salzburg, Viktor Merzhanov in Moscow, Paul Badura-Skoda and Oleg Maisenberg in Vienna, and regularly received valuable advice from his father, the late pianist-composer Friedrich Gulda.

Rico Gulda has been invited to prestigious festivals such as the Vienna Festwochen, the Munich Klaviersommer, the Bregenz and Bochum Spring Festivals, to the Klavier Festival Ruhr (Piano Festival Ruhr, Germany) as well as the Ludwigsburger Schloßfestspiele and the Donau Festival (Danube Festival).

In Austria, he has performed in all major locations such as the Grosser Musikvereinssaal and the Mozart-Saal in Vienna, in the Festspielhaus/Salzburg and the Brucknerhaus/Linz, where he performed his father´s Concertino for Players and Singers.

Numerous concerts in most of Europe and Asia with renowned orchestras such as the National Orchestra of Belgium, the Bruckner Orchestra Linz, the Czech Philharmonic of Brno, the Martinu Philharmonic Moravia, the Symphonic Orchestra of Milan and the Mozarteum Orchestra of Salzburg mark the career of the young pianist. The German Süddeutsche Zeitung described him as a musician of "...overwhelming refinement and power in sound and expression...". In May 2000, Rico Gulda performed with the Vienna Philharmonic at the Konzerthaus/Vienna (Mozart).

As a result of the great success of his first Japan-Tour in 1996 with Mozart Piano Concerti, Rico Gulda was re-invited in 1997 and ever since performs regularly in Japan. He has furthermore performed internationally in Belgium, Switzerland, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, the Czech Republic, South Korea, and Vietnam. The concerts in Vietnam and South Korea were broadcasted live by TV and Radio. His New York and Washington Debut Recitals in 1999 will be followed by an extended US-Tour in Feb./March 2003.

A first CD with Schubert's Sonata D 784 and the Three Piano Pieces was released in 1997. Two productions with music by Robert Schumann (solo) and Schubert (with the late Michael Badura-Skoda) were released in fall 1999. Now an exclusive recording artist for NAXOS, Rico Gulda will record a Schubert Disc this May with Christopher Hinterhuber and has released Schumann´s Album for the Youth in 2000 as a result of this collaboration.

Rico Gulda also takes great interest in all pedagogical aspects of music-making. Inspite of his youth, he has been appointed Assistant Professor at the "Mozarteum"University of Music in Salzburg, and Head of the Piano Department at the Schubert-Conservatory, Vienna. In 1999, he was invited as Guest Professor to Hansey University in Seoul/South Korea and has given master-classes in Vienna (Bösendorfer Academy), South Korea (King Sejong University, Sookmin Women´s University), and Japan (Nagoya University of Arts).

For EMI Classics, he has worked as a Producer, most notably with the tremendously successful disc "Vivaldi Reflections" of Ferhan and Ferzan Önder, where the twins perform a transcription of Vivaldi´s "Four Seasons" on two Steinway Grands and the fabulous, virtually unknown Bach-Variations op. 17 by Gustav Nottebohm, the famous Beethoven-Scholar and friend of Brahms - two world-premiere recordings.

Gustav Nottebohm and his work are hence also the topic of Rico´s Doctorate Thesis - his ambitions in the field of musicology are supported by a generous grant by the Cultural Department of the City of Vienna.

MARCH 2002