Yevgeny Sudbin

A pianist with an international education, Yevgeny Sudbin plays Baroque music as well as Russian and western European Romantic works. He is one of the top pianists to have emerged from post-Soviet Russia. Sudbin was born on April 19, 1980, in Leningrad, USSR, now St. Petersburg, Russia. He showed talent early and took lessons at the Leningrad Conservatory as a child. When Sudbin was ten, his family moved to Berlin, Germany, and he continued his education at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler. He moved to London in 1997 and has lived there ever since. There, he studied at the Purcell School and went on to the Royal Academy of Music. At these institutions, his principal teacher was Christopher Elton. Sudbin also studied with a roster of internationally prominent pianists, including Murray Perahia, Stephen Hough, and Leon Fleisher. In 2005, he made his recording debut on the BIS label with an album of Scarlatti keyboard sonatas. He has continued to record for BIS exclusively and, indeed, is that label's only exclusive artist. In 2008, Sudbin made his debut at the BBC Proms, where he has made many return visits. The debut album also pointed to the diverse nature of Sudbin's repertory. Whereas many expatriate Russian pianists have focused on Russian virtuoso repertory, he has also performed western European music from Scarlatti to Ravel. When he does play Russian music, he tends to steer away from standards in favor of lesser-known lights such as Nikolai Medtner and Mieczyslaw Weinberg. Sudbin has made highly praised recordings of Rachmaninov, however. He has appeared as a soloist with many top ensembles, including the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, the BBC Philharmonic, and the Czech Philharmonic. As a soloist, Sudbin has toured widely in Europe and has appeared many times in the U.S. (his New York debut came at the Frick Collection) and as far afield as Brazil. He is also an enthusiastic chamber music player who has recorded, among other works, the Schumann and Brahms piano quintets. By 2023, when he issued an album of Tchaikovsky ballet music on piano with his daughter Bella Sudbin, his recording catalog comprised more than 25 releases. ~ James Manheim, Rovi