Natalia ‘Strelle’ Strelchenko, who died after being found with multiple head injuries in Newton Heath, was a world famous pianist who had performed all over the world, the M.E.N. can reveal.

Ms Strelchenko, known as Natalia Strelle, had been described as a piano virtuoso, having performed her first concert at just 12 with the St Petersburg Symphony Orchestra.

Born in Russia, she first studied at the St Petersburg State Conservatory.

She then moved to Oslo, studying at the Norwegian State Academy of Music for three years from 2007 where she gained a PhD in Arts.

A trained musicologist, her research looking at historical piano techniques and stylistic traditions had seen her become an expert in Scandinavian Romantic piano music.

Since 2014 Ms Strelchenko had been assistant professor at the Conservatoire of Belfort in France.

This year she had already performed 17 concerts around the world, giving recitals at Le Vesinet and Cite Universitaire in Paris, and at the International Chamber Music Festival in Spain.

She was next due to perform Mozart’s Concerto number 24 with the Minsk Chamber Orchestra in Oslo, Norway.

As well as touring the world, Ms Strelchenko also gave many local concerts around Greater Manchester, performing at the Cross Street Chapel in Manchester city centre and with the Alderley Edge Symphony Orchestra.

In a video interview from 2012 before a performance at Wigmore Hall in London, a laughing Ms Strelchenko describes her playing style, saying: “I am really concerned with engaging with the public in order to bring my ideas to people... And do not care so much about wrong notes.”

Reviews of Ms Strelchenko’s performances described her ‘sheer virtuosity’ and how ‘power came balanced with poetry, velocity with reflection’.

In an interview her tutor at the Norwegian State Academy of Music, Professor Einer Henning Smebye, described her as having ‘a unique quality that is very rare: to create a real magic in the concert hall’.