When Vladimir Ovchinikov was a young child his family moved from his birthplace at Belebey in the Urals to Moscow; here he studied piano with Anna Artobolevskaya and later with Alexei Nasedkin at the Moscow Conservatory. In 1980 he took part in the Montreal International Music Competition, winning second place whilst the winner was Ivo Pogorelich. Two years later, at the Moscow International Tchaikovsky Competition Ovchinikov won the joint silver medal with British pianist Peter Donohoe on an occasion when the first prize was not awarded; five years after his success in Moscow, Ovchinikov won first prize at the Leeds International Piano Competition. His London debut at the Barbican Centre received critical acclaim, and he also performed at the Royal Variety Performance. A tour of Japan followed in 1989 and he has returned a further four times to date. In 1993 Ovchinikov made his debut at the Proms in London with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Yakov Kreitzberg.

Based in Moscow, Ovchinikov teaches at the Moscow Conservatory where he is a professor of piano. He has toured Europe and America playing with many orchestras including the Chicago Symphony, Royal Philharmonic, BBC Philharmonic and Leipzig Gewandhaus with conductors such as Vladimir Ashkenazy, Georg Solti, Mariss Jansons and Gennadi Rozhdestvensky. He often collaborated with the Russian State Symphony Orchestra and its conductor Yevgeny Svetlanov with whom Ovchinikov toured France, Holland and North and South America. Ovchinikov has also appeared in the Far East playing in Hong Kong and Singapore, whilst in 1998 he gave master-classes and performances in Melbourne and Sydney.

Ovchinikov has taken part in many music festivals including those at Aldeburgh, Edinburgh, Cheltenham, Schleswig-Holstein and the Hollywood Bowl. He also enjoys playing chamber music and performs in a trio with violinist Alexander Vinnitsky and cellist Alexander Rudin. They have recorded trios by Rachmaninov and Shostakovich, and Vinnitsky and Ovchinikov have recorded Grieg’s violin sonatas. One of the best of the modern Russian pianists, Ovchinnikov has a rhapsodic style and full tone. He has built his reputation in the West with works of the virtuoso Russian repertoire, excelling in performances of the music of Rachmaninov, Prokofiev, Mussorgsky and Shostakovich.

Ovchinikov’s success at the Leeds International Piano Competition led to a contract with EMI. For this label in August 1988 he recorded an excellent version of Liszt’s Etudes d’execution transcendante which The Gramophone described as ‘…a superb achievement, comfortably outclassing Arrau and Bolet in just about every department’. A disc of Rachmaninov’s Etudes-tableaux Opp. 33 and 39 was recorded in December 1989 and as a complete set it is again first class. Ovchinikov excels in the Russian repertoire, and recorded Prokofiev’s nine piano sonatas and some of the solo piano works for EMI between 1991 and 1993.

In October 1990 Ovchinikov recorded Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 1 Op. 35 for Collins Classics. It is coupled with an excellent version of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. He currently records for Melodya.

© Naxos Rights International Ltd. — Jonathan Summers (A–Z of Pianists, Naxos 8.558107–10).