Gilda Oswaldo Cruz

Brazilian pianist Gilda Oswaldo Cruz was born in Rio de Janeiro, where she began her musical studies. She graduated at the Escola de Música of the Rio de Janeiro Federal University with highest honours. After finishing the virtuosity course at the Musik Hochschule in Vienna, Austria, under the guidance of Hans Graf and Bruno Seidlhofer, Gilda Oswaldo Cruz got the first prize at the Elena Rombro-Stepanow International Competition. After further studies in Barcelona, she continued her concert career in Europe and South America. She lives presently in Lisbon, Portugal, and specializes in Brazilian and contemporary music, besides the solo and chamber-music repertoire for her instrument. Her first CD dedicated to piano works by Claudio Santoro, the most important Brazilian composer of his generation, was issued in Rio de Janeiro by Biscoitofino in 2001, getting excellent reviews. Her second CD, dedicated to the same composer, offers the first performance of several unpublished masterworks by Amazon-born Santoro. This CD has been released and sucessfully presented in Brazil, Portugal and Spain. In 2007 Gilda Oswaldo Cruz produced a series of fourteen radio programmes dedicated to the music of Arnold Schoenberg. The series was commissioned by Antena 2, the classical music official radio of Portugal, and broadcast twice in Brazil by the Rádio-Mec, the state-owned radio station of Brazil. In 2008, the same Antena 2 commissioned and broadcast a series of thirteen radio programmes about Heitor Villa-Lobos. This year, the 50th anniversary of the death of Villa-Lobos, Gilda Oswaldo Cruz will be recording a new CD with the Bachianas nº 4 and the sixteen Cirandas for piano solo, at the studio of label Biscoitofino, in Rio de Janeiro. (text by Gilda Oswaldo Cruz)