“The close-knit community of international contest pianists and much of the classical music world were stunned Thursday at the news from Benbrook [Texas], where police said Vadym Kholodenko, 29, found daughters Nika, 5, and Michela, 1, dead and his estranged wife, Sofya Tsygankova, wounded,” writes Bud Kennedy in Saturday’s (3/19) Star-Telegram (Fort Worth, TX). Kholodenko won the 2013 Cliburn Piano Competition, held in Fort Worth. “Vadym Kholodenko is not a suspect in the deaths of his two children…. Tsygankova, 31, a concert pianist in her native Russia, was hospitalized for stab wounds and a mental health evaluation, police said…. The couple married in 2010 … moved to Fort Worth in 2014, leaving war-torn Ukraine and seeking better medical care for Nika. They separated in August and were divorcing…. The deaths came the same week as the celebration of Kholodenko’s first album as an artist-in-partnership with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra on the France-based Harmonia Mundi label.” On Saturday at Bass Hall, Fort Worth Symphony Music Director Miguel Harth-Bedoya dedicated Elgar’s “Nimrod” from the Enigma Variations to Kholodenko.
Posted March 21, 2016
