Vovka Ashkenazy, who is of Russian and Icelandic parentage, began piano lessons at the age of six with Rögnvaldur Sigurjónsson in Reykjavík, where his family lived at the time. Ten years later, he moved to England to study with Sulamita Aronovsky at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester. He also benefited from occasional study sessions with pianists such as Leon Fleisher and Peter Frankl.

Vovka Ashkenazy made his debut in London at the Barbican Centre in 1983 with the London Symphony Orchestra under Richard Hickox, performing Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto. Since then, his career has taken him across Europe, as well as to Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and the Americas. He has participated in the Marlboro Festival in Vermont, as well as the Edinburgh and Spoleto festivals. Orchestras he has performed with include nearly all the major British orchestras, as well as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the Berlin Symphony, the Berne Symphony, and the Zürich Tonhalle Orchestra. Conductors he has worked with include his father, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Semyon Bychkov, Martin Fischer-Dieskau, and Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, at venues such as the Hollywood Bowl, the Sydney Opera House, the Sala Verdi in Milan, and the Royal Festival Hall in London.

Vovka Ashkenazy is also very active as a chamber musician and has recorded a CD of Italian music for clarinet and piano with his brother, Dimitri Ashkenazy, with whom he has toured Japan several times. He has also performed and recorded with his father, Vladimir Ashkenazy; their recordings for DECCA include Bartók’s Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, Rachmaninoff’s Suite for Piano Four Hands, and Schumann’s Andante and Variations for Two Pianos, Two Cellos, and Horn.

Ashkenazy devotes most of his time to teaching. He has given masterclasses in many countries, including China, Japan, South Korea, various European countries, and the United States. He was Professor of Piano at the Conservatoire Gabriel Fauré in Angoulême, France, from 1998 until 2007, when he moved to Switzerland. In 2012, following several masterclasses, he was offered a teaching position at the International Academy of Imola. He also teaches in the Master of Advanced Studies in Performance and Interpretation at the Conservatory of Italian Switzerland (CSI) in Lugano, at the Kalaidos Musikhochschule in Zürich, and at the Tiziano Rossetti Academy in Lugano.

Vovka Ashkenazy has contributed, through performances, to several charitable causes, including Action for Children and the Cystic Fibrosis Trust in the UK, Telethon in Switzerland, and the Bridges Peace Foundation in Cambodia and the Philippines. He was made Honorary Artistic Adviser of the Guangzhou Opera House in November 2010, and in 2014 he became Artistic Director of the Rina Sala Gallo International Piano Competition in Monza, Italy.