Evgeny Rzhanov (born 13 April 1938) is a Soviet and Ukrainian pianist and music educator. He was born in Kharkiv into a family of musicians and was named an Honored Artist of the Ukrainian SSR in 1967.
Rzhanov studied at the Kyiv ten-year school with Daniil Yudilevich. From 1956 to 1964 he attended the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, studying with Professor Yakov Flier; from 1961 to 1964 he was a postgraduate student in the classes of Flier and Lev Vlasenko. In 1964, he was among the finalists of the Queen Elisabeth International Competition in Brussels.
In the mid-1960s he began teaching at the Kyiv Conservatory and the Kyiv specialized music school. He later headed the piano department of the Kyiv Tchaikovsky Conservatory, organized thematic concerts and established competitions, including the Mykola Lysenko Competition. He has also frequently served as a jury member at competitions.
Rzhanov toured extensively throughout the republics of the Soviet Union and later across Europe. From the 1960s through the 1980s, he was the only pianist to perform all the works of Ukrainian composers Levko Revutsky, Borys Lyatoshinsky, and Viktor Kosenko. Chamber music, twentieth-century and contemporary works, and eighteenth-century music have held an important place in his performing activity. He has given concerts on harpsichord and organ and was an artist of Kyiv's Organ Hall during the 1980s and 1990s.
In 1992 Rzhanov moved to Germany, where he opened a small philharmonic society and performed actively throughout Europe. He returned to Ukraine in 2010 and continued teaching at the Reinhold Gliere Kyiv Institute of Music and the Mykola Lysenko Kyiv Secondary Specialized Music School. He has made numerous recordings of classical music.
His repertoire includes music by Johann Sebastian Bach, Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, Felix Mendelssohn, Sergei Prokofiev, Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy, Dmitri Shostakovich, Nikolai Medtner, Modest Mussorgsky, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Alexander Scriabin, Paul Hindemith, Arnold Schoenberg, and Alfred Schnittke. His programs of Ukrainian music include works by Borys Lyatoshinsky, Viktor Kosenko, Myroslav Skoryk, Levko Revutsky, Vitaly Kyreiko, Andriy Shtoharenko, Fylyp Nadenenko, Ivan Karabyts, Yuriy Ishchenko, and Mykhailo Verykivsky.