Sergei Musaelyan is a Russian pianist, teacher, artistic director of various music festivals, and president of music societies and foundations. He was born on November 23, 1950, in Moscow. His mother, a graduate of the Moscow Conservatory in the class of Konstantin Igumnov who later worked at the Central Music School, became his first teacher. He later studied with the teacher Evgeny Timakin.
Musaelyan showed exceptional musical gifts from early childhood. By the age of three his unusual talent had already become apparent, and while still in the fourth grade he performed Rachmaninoff's First Piano Concerto and Liszt's Sixth Rhapsody. After graduating early from the Central Music School, he entered the Moscow Conservatory, where he studied in the class of the outstanding pianist and teacher, Professor Yakov Flier.
From 1968 onward he was a regular participant in festivals. After his appearance at the Vianna da Motta International Piano Competition in Lisbon, critics wrote that he had a brilliant future and a unique performing style. Beginning in 1976, he worked with Mosconcert, gave solo concerts throughout the country, and from the late 1980s and in the 1990s toured successfully in Europe, collaborating with leading orchestras and conductors.
Among his conducting partners were Vladimir Ashkenazy, Valery Gergiev, Kurt Soderblom, Osmo Vanska, Yevgeny Svetlanov, Saulius Sondeckis, Fuat Mansurov, Peter Dabrowski, Konstantin Krimets, Vladimir Anisimov, Valery Turbin-Leonov, and Alexei Gulyanitsky. In 1988 he was noticed by the prominent musical figure Seppo Heikinheimo, after which he received many invitations to perform in Finland and Sweden. Within a year he gave more than one hundred concerts in major halls and became a well-known figure in Finland. During the same period he also performed widely in Europe, North and South America, Korea, and China.
Musaelyan combined his performing career with organizational and producing work. In 1990, together with Araik Babajanyan, he founded the Arno Babajanyan Memorial Foundation. Since then, festivals dedicated to the composer's memory have been held every five years in Moscow, Yerevan, and Los Angeles. In July 1992 he was one of the organizers of a music festival in Mikkeli, Finland. In 1991 he gave a charity concert at the United Nations for the benefit of the Red Cross in Geneva.
In 1993 and 1994 he organized the international Christmas festival "Moscow-Helsinki," which featured the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra and Chorus, the St. Petersburg Camerata, the V. Minin Choir, and conductors including Valery Gergiev, Saulius Sondeckis, and Yevgeny Svetlanov. In 1993 he created the international festival committee "SAMI." In 2012 he was elected president of the Yakov Flier Piano Art Development Foundation.
His discography includes a series of ten compact discs titled "Musaelyan's Collections" as well as six DVDs. Alongside his work as a pianist, concert activity as a conductor has taken an increasingly important place in his artistic life. For more than ten years he has also given master classes at the University of Edinburgh Pan-American in South Texas and lectured on piano art in different countries around the world.
He has been awarded the title Honored Artist of Russia and is a laureate of international competitions. In 1995 he received a gold medal, "Man of the Year" according to the North American Biographical Center in North Carolina, and he also held the title of Honorary Advisor of the Cambridge Biographical Society. Beyond music, he has been described as an artist of striking individuality, high culture, and mastery, and is noted not only as a prominent interpreter of Rachmaninoff but also as a poet, painter, chess player, and philosopher.
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