Liana grew up a student of Ludmila Ginsburg, herself a graduate from Moscow Conservatoire under the tutelage of professor Heinrich Neuhaus (Richter and Gilels were among his other pupils).
As a student Akopian-Tamarina won the Gold Medal at the 1963 Robert Schumann International Competition for Pianists and Singers in Zwickau, and in 1974, succeeding Richter, Nikolayeva and Gilels, was awarded the Robert Schumann Prize.
At the age of 6 he started his musical education at Kiev Central Music School and continued at the Moscow State Conservatory, where he was a student of the proclaimed "Godfather of the Russian piano school" Lev Naumov (custodian of the Heinrich Neuhaus methods that are credited with producing many extraordinary 20th-century Russian keyboard masters such as Gilels and Richter) and his assistant Daniil Kopylov.
Gilels | Emil Gilels |
In addition to Gilels, Verbitsky has worked with soloists such as Vladimir Spivakov, Gidon Kremer, Dame Evelyn Glennie, Oleg Kagan, Natalia Gutman, Viktor Tretiakov, Igor Oistrakh, Paul Badura-Skoda, and Frank Peter Zimmermann.