Pianist Dina Vainshtein collaborates with some of the most promising musicians of our time. Now based in Boston, she is the daughter of two pianists, and studied with Boris Berlin and Arthur Aksenov at the prestigious Gnessin Russian Academy of Music in Moscow. At the 1998 International Tchaikovsky Competition, she received the Special Prize for the Best Collaborative Pianist.
In recent concerts she has collaborated with violinists Miriam Fried, Yura Lee, Karen Gomyo, Chad Hoopes, Caroline Goulding, Zina Schiff, Alexi Kenney, and Angelo Yu; cellists Natasha Brofsky and Amit Peled; as well as the Borromeo String Quartet.
She came to the United States in 2000 to attend the Cleveland Institute of Music, where she worked with Vivian Hornik Weilerstein and Donald Weilerstein. She soon found numerous performing opportunities in the US, from Alice Tully Hall and Weill Recital Hall in New York City, to the Caramoor Festival, Music at Menlo, the Ravinia Festival, the Music Academy in the West at Santa Barbara, not to mention tours of Japan, China, Europe, and Russia.
Bob McQuiston reviewed the recent Naxos release of Emile Sauret’s violin showpieces featuring Michi Wianko and Vainshtein: “She couldn’t have a better partner than Ms. Vainshtein, who plays the perfect supporting role in these fiddle-dominated pieces. More specifically, she exercises a perfect balancing act between artistic reserve during bravura violin passages as opposed to compelling dramatic assertiveness when the piano is spotlighted.” Vainshtein made another acclaimed Naxos recital disc with Frank Huang, the concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic.
For nearly a decade, Vainshtein has been affiliated with the New England Conservatory and the Walnut Hill School, where she teaches chamber music. At both institutions she worked with Benjamin Zander in his renowned interpretation classes. Maestro Zander praised their collaboration as “the perfect partnership; [she is] the ultimate professional.”