Pianist, composer and conductor, ECU member since 2013Born on 14.09.1988
Maksim Štšura is an Estonian pianist, composer and music scholar dividing his time between London and Tallinn. He performs extensively as a soloist and chamber musician in prestigious concert halls across the United Kingdom and internationally, including St Martin-in-the-Fields, Purcell Room, Bridgewater Hall in Manchester and the Wigmore Hall.
He received his Master of Music degree from the Royal College of Music in 2013, studying under Gordon Fergus-Thompson and also completed the prestigious Artist Diploma course with him in 2014. Maksim was a Mills Williams Junior Fellow for 2013–14. In 2021 Maksim finished his Doctoral course at the RCM, supported by a Leverhulme Postgraduate Studentship and Mr. Nigel Woolner MBE, receiving his DMus for a research project titled ‘Translating twenty-first-century orchestral scores for the piano: transcription, reduction and performability.’
Maksim is currently a Lecturer in Piano, Chamber Music, and Music History, at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre in Tallinn. Maksim has performed in masterclasses with musicians including Dmitry Bashkirov, Stephen Hough, John Lill, Barry Douglas, Nina Seryogina, Veera Gornostayeva, Daniel Pollack, Tamas Ungar and Eliso Virsaladze. He has won prizes in several international competitions, including First Prizes at the 7th Estonian Piano Competition (2008), the Steinway-Klavierspiel- Wettbewerb in Germany (2004), the International Frederic Chopin Piano Competition in Estonia (2000) and other awards. He has appeared as a soloist with orchestras such as the Amadeus Chamber Orchestra, Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, Saint Petersburg State Academic Symphony Orchestra, Wiener Kammersymphonie and the Chester Philharmonic Orchestra. Maksim’s regular collaborators include violinist Eunsley Park, cellists Ariana Kashefi and Jamal Aliyev. Maksim is a Trustee of the Mills Williams Foundation.
As a pianist in the Foyle-Štšura Duo, an ensemble with violinist Michael Foyle founded in 2012, Maksim won the Beethoven Piano Society of Europe Duo Competition and the Salieri- Zinetti International Chamber Music Competition in 2015, performed recitals in Buckingham Palace, Usher Hall, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, as well as for the New York Chamber Music Festival, Cervantino Festival in Mexico and Evgeny Mravinsky Festival in Tallinn and St. Petersburg. The Foyle-Štšura Duo are the City Music Foundation Ambassadors, they have played live on BBC Radio 3, NPO Radio 4 and Estonian Klassikaraadio and recorded for Delphian Records and Challenge Classics.