He studied at the Leningrad Conservatory, and played works by controversial Western composers such as Schoenberg, Alban Berg, Olivier Messiaen and Pierre Boulez rather than the usual repertoire for Russian pianists.

An incident at a concert of Boulez in 1968 made Soviet authorities doubt his political reliability, and they largely interrupted his career for more than ten years.

When his daughter suffered antisemitic harassment in 1990, the family fled to East Berlin, where they lived in a refugee camp for several months.

At age six, he passed selection for the music school of the Leningrad Conservatory, although he had not played piano before; he studied there until 1960.

In the USSR he played some of the works of then controversial Western composers such as Arnold Schoenberg, including Pierrot Lunaire, assisted by his wife, musicologist Maja Elik.

He played music by Russians such as Sergei Slonimsky, Galina Ustvolskaya, Edison Denisov, Sofia Gubaidulina; the Pole Witold Lutosławski;[5] as well as Soviet premieres of music by Western composers such as Schoenberg, Alban Berg, Olivier Messiaen and Pierre Boulez.

[6] During a concert tour of Boulez in Leningrad in the autumn of 1968, in a period of relative cultural openness (shortly after the Prague Spring and the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops), Ugorski's enthusiastic applause was interpreted as a political gesture.

[1][5] His career was stopped for more than ten years and he was confined to work in the provinces,[5] as accompanist of a Young Pioneers choir.

[8] Unlike other Jews, he had not considered emigrating,[4] but in the spring of 1990 his daughter Dina Ugorskaja, then age 16 and also a pianist and pupil of the Conservatory, suffered antisemitic harassment and felt threatened.

[1][9] The Ugorski family escaped without preparation or papers for East Berlin,[7] living in a refugee camp for several months.