Detailed biography

Eliane Rodrigues was born in Rio de Janeiro. Her musical talent was discovered early on and fostered by Helena Guimarães Galo and Arnaldo Estrella (student of Alfred Cortot and friend of Villa Lobos), at the Conservatory of Antwerp student of Jacques De Tiège, student of Arthur Schnabel>Leon Fleisher>Jacques De Tiège.

She played a first recital at the age of 5 in the Teatro Mesbla in Rio de Janeiro. First TV performance at age 6 with the Orquestra Sinfonica Nacional conducted by Alceo Bocchino with a Haydn concerto, and another two times the same concerto conducted by Eleazar de Carvalho and Isaac Karabtchevsky with the Orquestra Sinfonica Brasileira. At age 7 she performed Mozart KV488 with the Orquestra Sinfonica Nacional conducted by Edouard van Remoortel (Rio de Janeiro).

In the USA she received the "special prize" of the jury at the Van Cliburn competition, and she made an indelible impression with Beethoven´s piano concerto n.4 at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Belgium.

After the "wonderkind" and "competitions" happenings, she received invitations to perform in more than 25 countries. Her intelligence and brilliant musical feeling allow her to play a repertory of 61 piano concertos.

In 1990 she took up composing again, producing brilliant and at times mischievous cadenzas for her concertos. In 1994-95 she wrote her 15 Momentos Musicais and composed the Sonate Oubliée with themes from her childhood. Her characteristics have remained unchanged: simplicity and spontaneity, feeling and imagination, technique, perfection without affectation, a delight for the eye and ear.

In February 1998 Rodrigues' Bach-CD was recorded. The critics describe her improvisations and paraphrases on works for the organ as: "The sonorities go back to the scale of more than 3 centuries of piano literature and link perfectly well up with the richness in colour of an independent way of pianistic thinking, they have their own new life, a fascinating transfiguration, full of phantasy." 

Astonishment, admiration and even incredibility caused her Suite n.1 "Rio de Janeiro" for piano and orchestra, that was first performed on 9 August 2000. She plaid and recorded in St. Petersburg the 5 concerto's for piano from Sergei Prokofiev with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra.

1998 - 2008 she was invited in a.o. Amsterdam, Antwerp, Brussels, Den Haag, Lisbon, Moscow, New-York, Nürnberg, Rotterdam, St. Petersburg, Volgograd, Zürich.

Over the last few years Eliane Rodrigues has also won great acclaim as a conductor. She has trained with a number of famous conductors and specialists: Herbert Slegers (theory), Alexander Dmitriev, Alexander Kantorov and Dmitri Liss (practical), Gloria Rodrigues-da Silva, prima ballerina (choreographer/kinematics).

She can now lead the orchestra to produce great classical compositions as she has already done for example with Beethoven’s piano sonatas.

Eliane Rodrigues is professor on the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp.