Biography
The Croatian/Portuguese pianist Robert Andres graduated from the Zagreb Music Academy and subsequently received a scholarship from the Soviet government to study at the St. Petersburg Conservatory with D. A. Svetozarov, a student of the great Russian pianist Sofronitski. He continued his studies in Vienna, and the United States where, as a Fulbright scholarship recipient, he studied at the University of Kansas with renowned Portuguese/American pianist Sequeira Costa, and earned there a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in piano, and a Master’s degree in musicology. He has also received valuable advice from renowned pianists, such as Pierre Sancan, Rudolf Kehrer, Claude Frank, Leonid Brumberg and Peter Katin. Andres has performed in recitals, with orchestras, and in chamber music concerts in many European countries and also in Venezuela and the United States. He has collaborated with artists such as Artur Pizarro, Grigori Zhislin and Zakhar Bron. The four-hands and two-piano duo with his wife, the Irish pianist Honor O’Hea, has, since 1995, met with enthusiastic responses from critics and audiences alike. After teaching at the Kalamazoo College in Michigan, U. S. A., since 1993 he has been teaching at the Madeira Conservatory – Professional School of Arts, where he is at present a tenured professor of piano and head of the keyboard department. He has been on juries of more than a dozen international competitions and regularly gives masterclasses. Since 1997 he has been Managing Director of the Association of the Friends of the Conservatory, a concert-organizing benefit organization that supports young talented musicians from the Region and that in its concert seasons continues to present internationally renowned musicians to Madeiran audiences. He was also the co-organizer of the 28th annual EPTA European conference that took place in Madeira in July 2006. Having developed an intense activity as a writer and lecturer on musical topics, Andres has contributed to several prestigious music journals, encyclopedias, and magazines in various countries, and from 1995 to 2002 he was a music critic and author of a weekly music page for the Jornal da Madeira. In 2001 the Scarecrow Press (U.S.A.) published his book on the beginnings of the scientific approach to piano technique. In 2008 he recorded a CD with piano works of Madeiran composer Victor Costa.
