| Biography | Arcadi Volodos (Arkadij Arkadievich Volodos; born 24 February 1972) is a Russian pianist. His first name is sometimes transliterated Arcady or Arkady.
Born in Leningrad in 1972, he began his musical training studying voice, following the example of his parents, who were singers, and later shifted his emphasis to conducting while a student at the Glinka Chapel School and the St. Petersburg Conservatory. Though he had played the piano from the age of eight, he did not devote himself to serious study of the instrument until 1987. His formal piano training took place at the Moscow Conservatory with Galina Eguiazarova. Volodos also studied at the Paris Conservatory with Jacques Rouvier. In Madrid, he studied at the Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofía with Dimitri Bashkirov.
Despite the relative brevity of his formal studies, Volodos has been naturally and rapidly propelled into the elite pantheon of the world's most important pianists. Thomas Frost, the producer of many of Horowitz's recordings, and producer of Volodos' recordings for Sony Classical, has said that Volodos "has everything: imagination, colour, passion and a phenomenal technique to carry out his ideas."
Volodos received the German award Echo Klassik as the best instrumentalist of 2003; he received the Gramophone Award for best instrumental recording in 1999 for Arcadi Volodos Live at Carnegie Hall, in 2010 for Volodos in Vienna, and in 2014 for Volodos plays Mompou |