Sofia Kiprskaya was born in Leningrad in 1991. She began to study music at the age of five. Graduated from the Rimsky-Korsakov St Petersburg State Conservatory where she also completed a postgraduate study (class of Anna Makarova). Trained at Prague Conservatory and the Conservatoire royal de Bruxelles (class of Jana Boušková). Since the 2008–09 season she has been a soloist with the Mariinsky Orchestra, becoming leader of the harp section in 2011.
Prize-winner at the Félix Godefroid International Harp Competition (Namur, Belgium; 1st prize and special Coq d’argent award), the Lily Laskine International Harp Competition (Deauville, France; 2nd prize), the Franz Josef Reinl Stiftung Harp Contest(Munich; 1st prize), the St Petersburg International Empress Elizabeth Petrovna Golden Harp Music Competition (1st prize and special award for the best performance of a work by Tchaikovsky) and the Martine Géliot International Harp Competition (Paris, 1st prize and special award from the jury chairman, composer Jacques Charpentier) among many other music competitions. Following her win at the Martine Géliot Competition, Sofia Kiprskaya recorded the solo CD Recital in Paris.
Prize-winner at the competition A Galaxy of Talents and Stars of the Academician Dmitry Sergeyevich Likhachev, recipient of the Yuri Temirkanov Prize, the Union of Concert Workers of the Russian Federation Prize and the Hope of Russia and Young Talents prizes.
Kiprskaya is a recipient of the Russian Presidential Prize for young cultural figures for 2021.
Sofia Kiprskaya has taken part in the European Harp Congress in Lyon and Cardiff and represented Russia at the International Harp Congress in Amsterdam and Sydney. Has presented solo programmes at the festivals Virtuosi of the Planet, Stars of the White Nights, Musical Olympus, Crescendo, Stars on Baikal, Palaces of St Petersburg, A Musical Expedition, festivals in Mikkeli (Finland) and Santander (Spain), the International Harp Festival (Sōka, Japan) and the Forte Music Fest (Almaty).
Has given concerts at major venues in Japan, Australia, France, Serbia, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy and the USA, among them New York’s Carnegie Hall, the Salle Fontainebleau, Prague’s Rudolfinium, the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre, the Grand and Small Halls of the St Petersburg Philharmonia and the Great and Small Halls of the Moscow Conservatory. Has collaborated with the Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, the State Symphony Orchestra of the Republic of Tatarstan, the MünchnerPhilharmoniker, the Symphonie orchester des Bayerischen Rundfunksand other ensembles. Together with the Mariinsky Orchestra she has featured in the recording of a large number of CDs.
In collaboration with the Russian Institute of the History of the Arts, Sofia Kiprskaya has released two albums of music from the times of Empress Elizabeth Alexeyevna. She presented the first St Petersburg performances of Rodion Shchedrin’s Concerto dolce, Valery Kikta’s Scottish Rhapsody and Jacques Charpentier’s La Danse devant l’arche.
Holds masterclasses at the Mariinsky Theatre and with the Russian National Youth Symphony Orchestra and is a jury member of several harp competitions. Founder of the International Harp Festival Northern Lyre at the Mariinsky Theatre, which was established in 2017; the festival takes place each year and features internationally acclaimed musicians.
She is actively involved in concerts for charity.
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