Nina Gurol

Pianist Nina Gurol developed a special affinity for contemporary music at an early age. “I am attracted to complexity, to penetrating multi-layeredness, and I want to venture into areas that initially seem opaque, perhaps even irritating,” she says, describing her artistic approach. Trained by Prof. Gesa Lücker at the HfMT Cologne and influenced by Tamara Stefanovich, Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Maria João Pires, she combines intellectual acuity with pianistic sensitivity in her playing. The press raves about her “almost enchantingly soft, almost melting touch - in the great tradition of Claudio Arrau” (WZ).

In a long-standing collaboration with the composer York Höller (a student of Pierre Boulez and B.A. Zimmermann), she has premiered numerous works and has since curated her programs in a sophisticated interplay of classical and contemporary repertoire.

Solo and chamber music engagements have taken Nina Gurol to renowned venues such as the Kölner Philharmonie, the Mariinsky Theater St. Petersburg and the Guotai Arts Center Chongqing, as well as to festivals such as the Beethovenfest Bonn, the Ruhr Piano Festival and the ACHT Brücken Festival for New Music.She won the international “HUGO” award for innovative concert formats in 2022 and was a finalist for the Berlin Prize for Young Artists.Live concert recordings have been published by WDR, Bayerischer Rundfunk and Deutschlandfunk, among others.

In fall 2025, her first joint album with cellist Valerie Fritz will be released, dedicated to world premiere recordings of York Höller's solo and duo works alongside works by Rebecca Clarke and Claude Debussy.

In addition to her passion for contemporary music, Nina Gurol is intensively involved with the interweaving of music, death and mourning and has curated a variety of solo and chamber music concert formats on this complex of themes in recent years.

As a TONALiSTEN artist, she regularly works with young people to explore the extent to which music is linked to social and existential issues in life.Nina Gurol is currently supplementing her work as a pianist with a doctorate in musicology on the function and affectivity of music in mourning processes.