Mihaela Ursuleasa

Ursuleasa is a free musical spirit and a force of nature. - Lawrence Budmen

Romanian pianist Mihaela Ursuleasa was born in Brasov on 27 September 1978. She studied at the Vienna Conservatory with Heinz Medjimorec and won the Clara Haskil Competition in 1995, aged sixteen.

Her first solo album Piano & Forte won the ECHO Klassik solo recording of the year award in 2010, and her second solo album Romanian Rhapsody was released in March 2011.

Ursuleasa died suddenly in Vienna, aged only thirty-three, probably from a brain haemorrhage. Her body was found in her apartment there on the morning of 2 August 2012.

In a statement on the pianist's website, her agent, Andreea Butucariu, wrote: Artists like Mihaela are those who give us hope, help us feel and make us understand that music, and also art, prevails above everything else; that it makes us advance as human beings. They make us realize that we are on the right path when we open not our eyes and ears but our hearts to listen, expecting music making to move us and take us some place else. This is what Mihaela’s music did.

 

A selection of articles about Mihaela Ursuleasa

Spreading Light and Making Darkness Vanish - Luiza Catrinel Marinescu remembers her classmate, the Romanian pianist Eugen Alcalay and explores the pianist's mother's book 'Rhapsody in black and white with Leonard Bernstein'

Ensemble. Poetic Chopin - Lawrence Budmen enjoyed the Seventh Miami International Piano Festival Discovery Series

Ensemble. Awesome technique - Lawrence Budmen listens to Romanian pianist Mihaela Ursuleasa