“When I play, you become the co-author. You listen to the music, but you are actually hearing your own voice, feelings, and experiences. You are the protagonist, and I am the mediator between the dream world and reality.”
Praised by critics for her “ecstatic creative power” (Online Merker), Elitsa Desseva is an award-winning pianist working at the intersection of performance, education, and concert curation. She is a faculty member of the Heidelberger Frühling Lied Academy, an internationally active pianist collaborating with leading singers and chamber musicians, the creator of workshops on Lied programming, and an artist exploring how forgotten repertoire can speak to audiences today.
Recent performance highlights include appearances at Wigmore Hall, Pierre Boulez Saal, Carnegie Hall, Musikverein, Musée d’Orsay, Brucknerhaus Linz, and Concertgebouw Amsterdam, as well as at festivals such as Heidelberger Frühling, Sommerliche Musiktage Hitzacker, Grachten Festival, LIEDBasel, and the Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festival. Her performances have been featured on BBC Radio 3, Radio France, SWR, NDR, and NHK World Japan.
Together with her long-term duo partner, baritone Mikhail Timoshenko, Elitsa has curated and performed concept-driven recital formats such as the 2021 Orsay–Royaumont series, designed in dialogue with the Musée d’Orsay collection , and Alaverdi (2023), a Georgian-inspired celebration for Jörg Widmann’s milestone birthday at the Heidelberger Frühling Festival. In 2024, the duo released their acclaimed album Eduard Erdmann: Lieder (Hänssler Classic), featuring world premieres of songs by Eduard and Irene Erdmann alongside works by Philipp Jarnach. That same year, Elitsa presented her own song Gift—based on a poem by Barbara Kennedy—at LIEDBasel Festival, a work that “captivated audiences with its unusual piano sounds” (Das Opernmagazin).
Highlights of the 2025–26 season include the darkly humorous cabaret-song program Der Tod, das muss ein Wiener sein, which she curated and performs with Hagar Sharvit, Mikhail Timoshenko, and Nikolaus Büchel at the Renitenztheater Stuttgart; First Schubert with Julian Prégardien and Feride Büyükdenktas; and a recital with Thomas Hampson and Giulio Putrino. In 2026, together with Mikhail, she will premiere a new song cycle by Yüri Reindeer at Rachmaninoff’s Villa Senar in Lucerne and make her debut at the Schubertíada Vilabertran.
Elitsa gained international recognition as a Lied pianist after multiple prestigious competition wins. She won 1st Prizes at the International Art Song Competition Stuttgart and the Franz Schubert and Modern Music Competition Graz, both in duo with Mikhail Timoshenko, and reached the final of the Wigmore Hall/Independent Opera Song Competition in London, where Mikhail was awarded 1st Prize. The duo went on to receive further distinctions at competitions in Dortmund, Lyon, and Schleswig-Holstein.
As a soloist, she has been celebrated for her interpretations of Hungarian composers, receiving the Béla Bartók Prize at the Île-de-France International Piano Competition (Paris), winning the Liszt–Bartók Competition (Sofia), and being awarded the Yordan Kamdzhalov Foundation Prize, which led to a performance of Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 2 at the Balabanov’s House Music Days in Plovdiv.
Since 2022, Elitsa has been an active educator, serving as Study Director, Academy Pianist, and Coach of the Heidelberger Frühling Liedakademie at the invitation of Thomas Hampson, becoming the first woman to hold this position. Dedicated to making Lied recitals more engaging, she led her workshop on concert programming at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz in 2025 and served as a docent in Lied performance during Song Week at Stellenbosch University in Cape Town. She further refined her coaching through a practicum at the Opera Studio of the Vienna Staatsoper.
A Britten Pears Young Artist and Yehudi Menuhin Live Music Now artist, Elitsa is an alumna of the Heidelberger Frühling Liedakademie with Thomas Hampson, Carnegie Hall’s Song Studio with Renée Fleming, the LIEDBasel Academy, and the Académie Orsay–Royaumont, which culminated in a live album release with B Records. She is a member of the International Hugo Wolf Academy Stuttgart and is supported by the Concerto21 Foundation.
Originally from Sofia, Bulgaria, her playing reflects a distinctive synthesis of the Russian, German, and Hungarian piano schools, shaped by studies at the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt Weimar and the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien.
She is currently based in Vienna.
