On the 1st of November the Matthiesen Foundation, together with the National Gallery London, organised and co-sponsored a lunchtime concert of the internationally acclaimed pianist Polina Osetinskaya. Polina began playing the piano at the age of five. She performed on stage for the first time at the age of six. In 1982, she entered the Central Music School at the Moscow Conservatory. In the winter of 1983, she gave her first solo concert in Moscow. At the age of eight, in Vilnius, she performed Johann Sebastian Bach’s Concerto in D minor with the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra conducted by Saulius Sondeckis. In 1987, when Osetinskaya was eleven years old, she made her debut in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, where she played Mozart’s Concerto No. 23 in A major with the Chamber Orchestra conducted by Georgy Vetvitsky. Osetinskaya continued her musical education at a lyceum school in St. Petersburg, where Marina Wolf was her teacher. In 1998 she graduated from the Saint Petersburg Conservatory as an external student. In 2000, she completed an assistantship-internship at the Moscow Conservatory with Professor Vera Gornostayeva.