Victor Radko-Shlyakhtenko (b. 2002) comes from a family of music lovers and started studying the piano at the age of five.  Born and raised in Los Angeles, he received first prizes in several local piano competitions (Spotlight, Glendale, Edith Knox, MTNA State, Young Stars of the Future, CAPMT Concerto, and Kathryn Gawartin Chopin).  Later, he was awarded second prize in the 2019 Waring International Piano Competition and first prize in the 2018 Los Angeles International Liszt Competition; the latter resulted in his European debut in the Leipzig Gewandhaus under the auspices of the American Liszt Society in 2019.

Victor made his orchestral debut at the age of 12 with the Orange Coast Symphony.  Since then, he has performed with over a dozen orchestras in concerti by Beethoven, Chopin, Grieg, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, and Clara Schumann.  Victor was a recipient of the U.S. National Chopin Foundation Scholarship from 2016-2019 and a Young Scholar of the Lang Lang International Music Foundation’s Class of 2018-2020.  In 2023, Victor received second prize in the Lima Symphony Young Artists’ Competition (Bluffton, OH), was a finalist in the Wideman International Piano Competition (Shreveport, LA), and was a grand prize winner of the Delta Symphony Orchestra competition (Jonesboro, AR).

Since 2017, Victor has also been pursuing studies in orchestral conducting, making his debut in 2019 with the South Coast Symphony performing Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Fantasy-Overture.  Most recently, Victor led the Oberlin Arts & Sciences Orchestra in a performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2 in December 2023.

Passionate about the sharing the impact of music, Victor has performed and given presentations at several elementary schools and community centers throughout Los Angeles; his fondest musical memory to date is sharing works of Chopin with children who had never been exposed to classical music.

Currently in his junior year as a piano performance major, Victor is deeply grateful to his music teachers, Stanislav Ioudenitch (piano) and Raphael Jiménez (conducting), with whom he studies at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio.