Arcadi Volodos

Born in St Petersburg in 1972, Arcadi Volodos began his musical studies with lessons in singing and conducting at the Conservatory there. He did not begin serious training as a pianist until 1987, going on to study piano at the Moscow Conservatory with Galina Egiazarova, as well as in Madrid and Paris.

Since making his New York debut in 1996, Arcadi Volodos has given recitals throughout the world and performed with the most eminent orchestras and conductors. He has worked with orchestras including the Berlin, Israel, New York and Munich Philharmonic orchestras, the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Orchestre de Paris, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra and the Boston and Chicago Symphony Orchestras, collaborating with conductors such as Myung-Whun Chung, Lorin Maazel, Valery Gergiev, James Levine, Zubin Mehta, Seiji Ozawa, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Paavo Järvi, Christoph Eschenbach, Semyon Bychkov and Riccardo Chailly.

Recitals have played a central role in Arcadi Volodos’s artistic life since he began his career. His repertory includes major works by Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Beethoven, Liszt, Rachmaninoff, Skryabin, Prokofiev and Ravel, alongside less widely performed pieces by Federico Mompou, Ernesto Lecuona and Manuel de Falla.

Arcadi Volodos is a regular guest at the most prestigious concert halls in Europe, appearing regularly in Berlin, Vienna, London, Amsterdam, Paris, Rome, Madrid, Zurich, Brussels, Lisbon, Stockholm and Munich, as well as at the Ruhr Piano Festival, the Festival International de Piano de La Roque d’Anthéron and the Salzburg Festival.

Since his Gramophone Award-winning debut recital at Carnegie Hall, released by Sony Classical in 1999, Arcadi Volodos has recorded a series of critically acclaimed albums. These include revelatory interpretations of the Schubert sonatas and Rachmaninoff solo piano works, as well as live performances with the Berlin Philharmonic of Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto, conducted by James Levine, and Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto, conducted by Seiji Ozawa. Volodos Plays Liszt, released in 2007, won numerous prizes, while his Musikverein recital from 2010 was released on CD and DVD to international critical acclaim. His 2013 solo album Volodos Plays Mompou received a Gramophone Award and the Echo Klassik Award. Volodos Plays Brahms, published in 2017, features 13 works by Brahms, including opp. 117 and 118, as well as a selection from op. 76. The album was awarded the Edison Classical Award, the Diapason d’Or and the Gramophone Award in 2018. In October 2019 Sony Classical released his new recording, Volodos Plays Schubert, which features the Sonata in A major D. 959 and the Minuets D. 334, D. 335 and D. 600. In 2020 the album received the Edison Classical Award.