‘Power and soulfulness: the poet of the piano Olga Scheps at the Herkulessaal …’
(Dr Klaus Peter Richter, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 5 May 2013)

Olga Scheps was born in Moscow in 1986 to Jewish Ukrainian parents. The family moved to Germany when she was six and continue to live there. The daughter of two pianists, Olga discovered piano playing for herself at the age of four.
At an early age she had already developed her own unique style of keyboard playing, which combines intense emotiveness and powerful expressivity with extraordinary pianistic technique. Among those who discovered these talents was Alfred Brendel, who has encouraged the young pianist. A holder of scholarships from the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben and Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes, she completed her studies with Professor Pavel Gililov in her adopted home of Cologne in 2013, passing her concert examination with distinction. She rounded out her training with Professor Arie Vardi and Professor Dmitri Bashkirov.
Besides the well-known works for piano, Olga Scheps’s repertory consists of compositions that are rarely heard in the concert hall, including the posthumous Études of Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt’s Malédiction, Olivier Messiaen’s Les Oiseaux exotiques, Antonín Dvořák’s Piano Concerto, Arvo Pärt’s Lamentate, and Mieczysław Weinberg’s Piano Quintet. In September 2023 she will premiere David Garrett's Piano Concerto at the Tsinandali Festival.
Her solo recitals are as popular with audiences all over the world as her acclaimed appearances as a soloist with orchestra and her chamber projects. Such noted conductors as Thomas Dausgaard, Lorin Maazel, José Serebrier, Marcus Bosch, Ralf Weikert, Michel Tabachnik, Antoni Wit, Ivor Bolton, Cristian Mandeal, Christoph Altstaedt, Tugan Sokhiev, Simone Young, Markus Poschner, and Pablo Heras-Casado have invited Olga Scheps to collaborate with them.
Among the leading orchestras with which she has appeared in concert are the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo, the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, the Mozarteum Orchester Salzburg, the Munich Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the State Symphony Cappella of Russia (Moscow), the Staatskapelle Weimar, the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, the NDR Radiophilharmonie, the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, the Prague Philharmonia, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the New Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, the Braunschweig State Orchestra, the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra and the Real Orquesta Sinfónica de Sevilla.

Olga Scheps now performs with great success in world-famous concert halls such as the Elbphilharmonie, the Berlin and Cologne Philharmonie, the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Cadogan Hall London, the Zurich Tonhalle, and the Suntory Hall Tokyo. She is a sought-after guest at festivals like the Rheingau Musik Festival, Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Kissinger Sommer, Heidelberger Frühling, Klavier-Festival Ruhr, Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, MDR Musiksommer, Lucerne Festival am Piano, ACHTBRÜCKEN Festival in Cologne, Mozart Festival Würzburg, Mersin Festival in Turkey, and Menuhin Festival Gstaad.
A passionate chamber musician, she plays regularly with such artists as Alban Gerhardt, Daniel Hope, Adrian Brendel, Jan Vogler, Nils Mönkemeyer, the Danish String Quartet, the Danel Quartet and the Kuss Quartet, with which she recorded Mieczysław Weinberg’s Piano Quintet.
Since 2009 Olga Scheps has been an exclusive Sony Classical artist. Her debut album Chopin immediately won an ECHO Klassik award. The two recordings that followed, Russian Album and Schubert, were also highly praised by the press. Her fourth Sony Classical release features Chopin’s Piano Concertos nos. 1 and 2 with the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra. The success of her solo-album Vocalise was surpassed by her album Satie which Olga Scheps has recorded on the occasion of the French composer’s 150th birthday: It reached top 1 of the German classical music charts at first go.
She broke new ground with the album 100 % Scooter – Piano Only, on which she recorded arrangements of the most famous Scooter hits by Sven Helbig. Following a recording of Tchaikovsky’s 1st Piano Concerto with the WDR Symphony Orchestra, Olga Scheps’ album Melody features repertoire ranging from Bach to Aphex Twin, tracing an arc across four centuries. A further release features her together with the Kuss Quartet performing the Weinberg Piano Quintet. On her latest album Family she combines works from the established classical canon with new piano arrangements of highly popular melodies and soundtracks as well as world premiere recordings of compositions by Christopher von Deylen (aka Schiller) and Chilly Gonzales.

Olga Scheps is a Steinway Artist.