Nikolai Tokarev

Nikolai Tokarev was born in Moscow in 1983 and is from a musical family. His father is a concert pianist, his mother a cellist. He began musical training in 1988 at the renowned Gnessin Music School in Moscow, graduating in 2001 with distinction. From 2004 to 2006 he studied at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester. He then engaged in postgraduate studies in Düsseldorf with Professor Barbara Szczepanska at the Robert Schumann College of Music.

He made an early debut in 1989 at the age of six with a solo concert in Moscow. At the age of 14 he began giving concerts in Europe and Japan. In 2000 Tokarev was a prizewinner at the 10th Eurovision Grand Prix of Young Musicians in Bergen, Norway and in the same year, he performed in Tokyo with the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra under Gerd Albrecht. In September 2006 he was presented with the Orpheum Public Award at the 8th International Orpheum Music Festival in the Tonhalle in Zurich.

In that same year he won second prize and the audience prize at the Géza Anda Competition in Zurich. Nikolai Tokarev regularly makes guest appearances at international festivals - including the Schloss Ludwigsburg festival, the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, the Rheingau Music Festival, the Summer Music festival in Bad Kissingen, the Davos Music Festival and the music festival in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania. He has given concerts with numerous orchestras, including Camerata Salzburg, the Tonhalle Orchestra of Zurich, the National Philharmonic of Russia and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra.

In April 2007 Nikolai Tokarev released his first piano recital on CD for the SONY Classical label featuring works by Schubert, Chopin and Alexander Rosenblatt. He has been awarded the 2008 Echo Klassik for Best Newcomer (piano) for the album. The second album featuring music by French composers like Ravel, Debussy, Rameau and César Franck was released in autumn 2008. In 2009, a live recording of piano concertos from Chopin and Grieg from the KKL in Lucerne followed. In autumn 2010, his CD with the piano concerto no. 1 from Tchaikovsky and the piano concerto no. 3 from Rachmaninov was released, accompanied by the National Philharmonic Orchestra of Russia and Vladimir Spivakov.