Alexander Melnikov

Alexander Melnikov graduated from the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory, where he studied with Lev Naumov. His most formative musical experiences included early encounters with Sviatoslav Richter, who regularly invited him to festivals in Russia and France. He is a prize-winner of prestigious competitions, among them the Robert Schumann International Competition (1989) and the Queen Elisabeth Competition (1991).
Alexander Melnikov developed an intense and lasting interest in historically-informed performance practice early on. His major influences in this field include Andreas Staier and Alexei Lubimov, with whom he has worked on numerous projects. He regularly performs with well-known early music ensembles including the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, musicAeterna and the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin.
As a soloist, Alexander Melnikov has performed with the Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Munich Philharmonic, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra among others. He has worked with conductors such as Mikhail Pletnev, Teodor Currentzis, Charles Dutoit, Paavo Järvi and Thomas Dausgaard.
Together with Andreas Staier, Alexander Melnikov recorded an all-Schubert programme of four-hand pieces, which they have also regularly performed in concert. Another essential part of his work is his intensive chamber music collaboration with the cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras.
Concerts with his long-standing duo partner Isabelle Faust are also extremely important to him. Their complete account of the Beethoven Violin Sonatas on harmonia mundi has become a benchmark recording and was awarded the Gramophone Award and nominated for a Grammy. They have also recorded the complete sonatas for violin and piano by Brahms (2015) and by Mozart (2018 and 2021).
In 2023 Alexander Melnikov released his new album Fantasie – Seven Composers, Seven Keyboards, which is linked to his project Many Pianos: a concert programme featuring several instruments, each representing a different compositional style of its time.
Planned highlights of the 2023/24 season will include a concert tour to Australia with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, an artist portrait residency at the Cologne Philharmonie, appearances with François-Xavier Roth and Les Siècles, concerts with orchestras such as the Bavarian State Orchestra, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, the Munich Chamber Orchestra and the Belgian Baroque orchestra B’Rock, and collaborations with conductors including Maxim Emelyanychev, Anja Bihlmaier, Vladimir Jurowski, Nicholas Collon and Osmo Vänskä.