Nikolay Medvedev

Piano

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Nikolai Medvedev is a Berlin-based pianist whose international career encompasses solo, orchestral and chamber music performances. He has appeared at venues including the Konzerthaus Berlin, Brucknerhaus Linz, Salle Cortot in Paris, Grieghallen in Bergen, the National Philharmonic of Ukraine in Kyiv, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Hayes Hall at Artis-Naples and Auditorio León de Greiff in Bogotá.

Medvedev’s extensive solo repertoire spans music from the Baroque to the twentieth century, with a particular emphasis on the Western European tradition and its central Classical and Romantic repertoire.

He also commands an extensive repertoire of works for piano and orchestra, encompassing many of the major concertos of the Classical and Romantic literature as well as works of the twentieth century. He has performed with orchestras under conductors including Paolo Bartolomeolli, Emil Tabakov, William Noll, Tom Seligman and José A. Méndez.

Chamber music forms an important part of Medvedev’s artistic activity. His wide-ranging chamber repertoire encompasses many of the central works of the classical repertoire, and his chamber music partners have included Mihaela Martin, Frans Helmerson, Klaus Mäkelä, Latica Honda-Rosenberg and Maria Ioudenitch.

Medvedev’s discography comprises three solo albums: Rachmaninoff, Medtner & Tchaikovsky: Piano Works (Quartz, 2021), Glazunov: Piano Sonatas (Quartz, 2022) and Fusions (SOMM Recordings, 2026). His recordings have attracted international critical attention from leading music publications including Gramophone, BBC Music Magazine, RONDO Magazin, Musical Opinion, Pizzicato and MusicWeb International. Critics have particularly noted the beauty and depth of his tone, his poise and precision, formidable virtuosity and profound structural understanding.

Medvedev studied at the Gnessin Russian Academy of Music in Moscow with Tatiana Zelikman, one of the most distinguished representatives of the Russian piano teaching tradition. His artistic development was further enriched by work with distinguished musicians such as Nikolai Petrov, Dmitry Bashkirov and Vladimir Tropp.

From 2014 to 2022, Medvedev was a faculty member at the Gnessin Russian Academy of Music, where he taught solo piano and chamber music. Following his move to Berlin in 2022, he has worked at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler Berlin and the Universität der Künste Berlin. In autumn 2026, he joined the Barenboim-Said Akademie as a piano répétiteur, working with the violin studio of Prof. Mihaela Martin.

Alongside his performing and academic activities, Medvedev is regularly involved in charitable and socially engaged artistic projects. 

Nikolay's 2015 International Tchaikovsky Competition performances
Round 1: 20 June 2015, 7:50 p.m.
Round 2: 22 June 2015, 8:00 p.m.
Round 2: 25 June 2015, 8:00 p.m.

Nikolay is a member of the Russian Rachmaninov Society and Russian Musical Union and also a councillor of EMI Department CASIO gmbh since 2020.
Medtner; Rachmaninov; Tchaikovsky Works for Piano, Quartz, QTZ2143
   '"Listening blind, could one tell that the pianist is Russian? High-octane virtuosity and cultivation of a long singing line are not enough on their own, though the beauty, colouring and, above all, depth of tone might have persuaded me. What one would not doubt in a blind listen is the nationality of the music that Medvedev has chosen. He has a natural empathy with (and the technical and musical means to convey) the heart-on-sleeve emotional turmoil common to all three works: try the second and fourth of Rachmaninov’s Moments musicaux for flailing, uninhibited angst, or the despairing misery of No 3 in gloomy B minor."
Overall, well recorded and well worth a listen.
Jeremy Nicholas, GRAMOPHONE

"There's something wonderfully unshowy about Medvedev's performance here, despite the glittering quality of such works as Tchaikovsky's Grand Sonata in G major. Other pianists might be tempted to showboat, but this is a pianist with poise and precision."
BBC Music Magazine

"This is the first solo album by this exceptional pianist, a carefully chosen programme, with each of the three works likely to appeal to the same music-lover.

On this showing, Medvedev is clearly an artist to be watched - and listened to. In by far the largest work on this disc, the Tchaikovsky Sonata, this is a work that in many performances does not appear to possess the personal qualities of many of his other works. It can often seem too Schumannesque and less clear in terms of its ideas to be typical of Tchaikovsky at his finest to make a strong impression - but not in this performance. Medvedev's playing is beautifully controlled, deeply expressive and full of rhythmic life. He also possesses the occasional exquisite delicacy of touch which the brief Scherzo occasionally demands; indeed, throughout the entire recital these polished and sensitive performances are always sensitive and imaginative, well shaded and rhythmically alive. In the Rachmaninoff pieces, there is great variety and colour here and a perfect command of the instrument.

Medvedev's playing throughout is always deeply imaginative and is invariably placed at the service of these great composers. It is rare to encounter an artist who plays Russian music with such deep understanding, and this outstanding recording can be most urgently recommended."

Robert Matthew-Walker, Musical Opinion (April-June 2022)

"a fantastic program... this music is close not only to his fingers but also to his heart. He masters all the technical challenges with superior skill, yet he also allows the shifts in mood to unfold through many interpretive subtleties."
Remy Franck

“Nikolai Medvedev is a pianist with formidable virtuosity and profound structural understanding.”
Mario-Felix Vogt, RONDO Magazin

Read MusicWeb International Review

Meet the artist online

Learn more about Nikolay Medvedev at 'Meet the Artist Online'
The 'Meet the Artist Online' website features interviews in which musicians, conductors and composers discuss aspects of their creative lives, including inspirations, influences, repertoire, performance, recording, significant teachers and more. The interviews offer revealing insights into the musician's working life and a fascinating glimpse "beyond the notes".
Meet the Artist Online website: Nikolay Medvedev
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International Piano Magazine Autumn 2026 Issue
"Jazz night at the concert grand', Kapustin, Gershwin and Earl Wild at the banquet. In an arena owned by Marc-André Hamelin, Steven Osborne and Yeol Eum Son, and more recently Frank Dupree, Nikolay Medvedev's perspective on Kapustin's Second Sonata (1989) is gripping and driven. Marginally broader than Hamelin. the composer himself and Nikolai Petrov (who gave the premiere in 1991 and was an early influence on Medvedev), quicker than Osborne or Son, his all-out approach offers plenty of thrills. And with a big-boned Bechstein D282 at his disposal he doesn't hold back (sample the solar-plexus punch of that B flat octave opening Gershwin's Three Preludes). Taking a cue from Kapustin's own recordings (predominantly loud, often sidestepping the already sparse markings in his scores), he sets his dynamic levels high. The piano manages. Some listeners may wilt, Hamelin's limpidity, Osborne's balancing and Son's mercurially lit brilliance superficially giving one an easier ride.
The Op 41 Variations (1984), standard repertory these days, comes in many guises, ranging from Yuja Wang in concert at six minutes to Son and Dupree (jamming a jazz trio arrangement) at getting on for eight. Medvedev identifies with the composer's sinewy characterisation at just under seven. Sterner-voiced and steelier than Son, he conjures a compulsive, dizzying soundscape.

Five of the vertiginous Op 40 Concert
Études (Nos 1, 2, 6, 7 and 8) - a tsunami of imagination and keyboard genius reminding us just how complete a pianist Kapustin was (he studied with Goldenweiser) - find Medvedev in much the same ballpark as Hamelin, albeit less silken, closer idiomatically to the bass and bite of the composer (Melodiya, 1985). From the Chopinesque Second Étude (Reverie) and the folksy finger-picking Americana of the Sixth ('Pastorale") to the laid-back swing. caprice and brassiness of the Seventh (Intermezzo) and the powerhouse attack of the Eighth, the adrenalin rush is palpable.
Medvedev brings similar electricity to Earl Wild's Seven Virtuoso Études after Gershwin, but with lighter-actioned dexterity and more indulgently sensual sonorities added to the mix. This is Harlem not Moscow.
In Nos 1, 2 and 4 he pulls back a shade on Wild's benchmark account (Quintessence,
1978), his rubato arguably less instinctively
'knowing'. No matter. Things like 'I got rhythm' and 'Fascinatin' rhythm' are a riot,
"The Man I love' and 'Embraceable you' a nostalgia trip. With crisp production values and physically close yet airy sound, this is a penetratingly invested project.

ATES ORGA