TATJANA DRUJAN

Tatjana Drujan was born in Moscow. She received her first cello lessons at the famous Gnessin State Music School at the age of five. She had her first solo appearance when she was seven. During this time she was a multiple award winner in the national competitions. Her teachers were Efim Gendlin and Anatoly Moisseev, students of Sergei Shirinski, cellist of the legendary Beethoven Quartet. In 1986 Tatjana Drujan played the Rococo Variations by Pyotr Tchaikovsky with the orchestra of the Moscow Music Teachers Association in the Big Hall of the "House of Artists", one of the most renowned Moscow concert venues. A concert tour through the USA followed in 1988 with appearances in the most important concert halls in America, including Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Edwin-Fischer-Hall New York under the direction of Dmitri Kitaenko and Abraham-Lincoln-Center Washington with Zubin Mehta .

The years 1986 to 1991 were completed with studies at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, with Professor Valentin Feigin, who was a prizewinner of the International Tchaikovsky Competition and assisted another legend of our time, namely Mstislav Rostropovitch. She graduated with honors. During this time, Tatjana Drujan was a member of the Conservatory Chamber Orchestra, which was the 1st prize winner of the Karajan competition and gave guest performances in Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Austria and the USA. Numerous radio recordings were made. In 1990 she became the soloist of the Philharmonic String Quartet ("Rossconcert"), and in the same year she won the Borodin Competition and later the Shostakovich Competition. Over the next year and a half she has given concerts all over Russia, accompanied by state television and broadcast on the country's first channel, and attended several master classes, including with Yuri Bashmet and Viktor Tretyakov. In 1991, shortly before the state exam, she was commissioned to do a newly composed Premiere of cello concert with the symphonic orchestra of the conservatory; the concert was broadcast directly on television and radio throughout the former Soviet Union. This also resulted in a recording.

In Germany, Tatjana Drujan completed her education at the High School of Music and Performing Arts in Frankfurt am Main with Prof. Gerhard Mantel. Together with the Russian Chamber Philharmonic St. Petersburg, she is a frequent and welcome guest at all major German festivals and podiums, such as the Rheingau Music Festival, Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, Altenburger Sommer, Zelttakt Freiburg, Summer Night Classics Mainz, Villa Musica Neuwied, Konzerthaus Berlin, Herkulessaal Munich, but also in Switzerland, France, Spain and Turkey. Also worth mentioning are her cooperations with Giora Feidman, Irina Edelstein, Liana Isakadze, Sergej Nakariakov, Dmitri Berlinski, Andrei Gavrilov, Monica Gutman, Igor Oistrakh, Leo Kremer, Anne-Sophie Bertrand, Nikita Fitenko and others.

Together with the Chagall Quartet Frankfurt founded in 2001 Tatjana Drujan is interested of works by Jewish composers, such as Viktor Ullmann, Hans Kràsa, Gideon Klein, Pavel Haas, Karel Reiner, who were destroyed during the Holocaust, and Bernhard Sekles or Erwin Schulhoff, who were impoverished or emigrated into oblivion due to Nazification. In 2004, a broadcast about the quartet's efforts was recorded by Deutsche Funk.

At present Tatjana Drujan plays an italian master cello from the workshop of Raffaele and Antonio Gagliano, around 1820.