Gülru Ensari

I, Gülru Ensari, was born as the daughter of a pianist mother and an amateur guitarist father. I was still in my mother’s womb when I first encountered music. After I was born, music became an inseparable part of me through my mother’s rehearsals at home and my father playing the guitar at my bedside.

I began my piano education at the age of 4 with my mother, and continued at the age of 6, alongside primary school, at the conservatory as a student of Assoc. Prof. Nihan Yapalı.

When I was admitted to the Istanbul German High School at the age of 14, I first experienced the disappointment of not being able to enter Robert College. Looking back at that time now, I see studying at the German High School as one of the best decisions of my life. One of the most important reasons for this is the “Jugend musiziert” competition, in which friendship and music are intertwined, that I earned the right to take part in and in which I came first in a different category each year. Of course I have rankings in other international competitions too, but through this competition I both understood how indispensable music’s place within me is and came to believe that I could have a place in the music world. With the guidance of my teacher Prof. Meral Yapalı, who had a very great influence on my life, I decided to make being a pianist my profession.

My greatest fortune on this path was my teacher Meral. Every weekend, at her home in Rumelihisari, we would both do our work together and talk about our ideas on music and life. It was much more special, beautiful and, of course, developmental for me than a teacher-student relationship. And again, in one of the master classes I attended with her guidance, at the Mozarteum Summer Academy, I met Prof. Vassily Lobanov, and with the scholarship I received from the German High School I became his student for five years at the Cologne University of Music.

I have a friendly nature that loves people and communities. When I combined this trait with music, I had in fact already discovered chamber music, my greatest passion, while still in Istanbul. That is why I completed my master’s education in chamber music with Prof. Anthony Spiri, who inspired me greatly.

This passion and my love for the stage brought me together with world-famous musicians I could not even have dreamed of in my childhood. Sharing the same stage with musicians such as Gautier Capuçon, Ilya Gringolts, Clemens Hagen, Sebastian Manz, Cihat Aşkın, Hakan Şensoy, Dorukhan Doruk and Sevil Ulucan has always been a great source of happiness and motivation for me.

With the piano Duo we founded with pianist Herbert Schuch in 2014, we have given concerts both at select festivals of Europe and Turkiye, in halls with wonderful acoustics, and in many countries around the world, and we made four CD recordings.

With the birth of my daughter in 2019, a whole new meaning came into my life and motherhood was happily added to my vital roles such as pianist, daughter and student.