Lavinia Coman

Lavinia Coman is a professor, pianist and musicologist. She was born on November 27, 1940 in the city of Focșani in Vrancea county. Her father was a pharmacist and her mother an accountant. She attended primary school, secondary school and high school in the same city. In the same time, she took piano lessons with Professor Noelia Prisecaru. Between 1959 and 1964 she studied at the Ciprian Porumbescu Music Conservatory in Bucharest, with the famous concert pianist Silvia Șerbescu. After graduation, she was assigned as assistant to the lied class of the great lyric artist Nicolae Secăreanu, soloist of the National Opera in Bucharest. Between 1968 and 2007 Mrs Coman taught piano in the Keyboards department of the Conservatory, where she went through all the steps of the university hierarchy. Among the many disciples she trained, Luiza Borac is an important name, a distinguished pianist, winner of numerous international competitions, who has an impressive solo career, and is currently a tenured professor at the Hanover Conservatory. Starting with 1988, Lavinia Coman has also held the Piano Didactics course, which she is still teaching at this moment. In 2002, she completed a PhD in musicology. During the last three decades, she has conducted programs and training courses for teachers in Romania. She created in this field a professional conversion module, which she organizes at the Valahia University in Târgoviște, being the author of the continuous training programs for music teachers organized by the Ministry of Education and Research.

She developed a wide concert career, as a soloist, in chamber ensembles and as an accompanist. She gave over 400 concerts and recitals in prestigious theatres, participated in live programs and recordings on Radio and Television. She has been constantly concerned with the promotion of modern and contemporary music, with a special interest for the interpretation of works from the Romanian musical literature, both old and current. She has performed over 100 first auditions in these categories of repertoire and took part in over 400 public events held in prestigious concert halls in Romania, Spain, France, Austria, Germany, Italy, Russia, Poland, Bulgaria, Moldova.

As a member of the Union of Romanian Composers and Musicologists (UCMR), she is part of the musicology department office. She published an impressive number of articles, reviews, presentations, studies, curated editions, etc. She is the author of the monographic volumes Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt, Constantin Silvestri, Silvia Șerbescu, as well as of the books Do you want to be a piano teacher?, Modern piano playing, The Art School in the Golden Age. From the memories of a high school principal. She received the UCMR Prize for musicology in 2006 and 2014. She was also offered the Excellence Award from the Actualitatea muzicală Magazine in 2018. She is specialized in the Catalan language and culture, promotes Romanian-Catalan cultural relations, especially in the music field. For her activity in this area, the Institute of External Promotion of Catalan Culture in Barcelona offered her in 2018 the Josep Maria Batista i Roca – Memorial Enric Garriga Trullols Prize.