Konstantin Scherbakov is a Russian pianist

Pianist

A pianist is a musician who plays the piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers, solo instrumentalists, or other performers.-Choice of genres:...

. He was the winner of the first Rachmaninov Competition in 1983. In 1990, he played solo in four recital

Recital

A recital is a musical performance. It can highlight a single performer, sometimes accompanied by piano, or a performance of the works of a single composer.The invention of the solo piano recital has been attributed to Franz Liszt....

s at the Chamber Music

Chamber music

Chamber music is a form of classical music, written for a small group of instruments which traditionally could be accommodated in a palace chamber. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers with one performer to a part...

 Festival of Asolo

Asolo

Asolo is a town and comune in the Veneto Region of Northern Italy. It is known as "The Pearl of the province of Treviso", and also as "The City of a Hundred Horizons" for its mountain settings.-History:...

; this launched his international career.

Scherbakov has had a successful recording career for Naxos Records

Naxos Records

Naxos Records is a record label specializing in classical music. Through a number of imprints, Naxos also releases genres including Chinese music, jazz, world music, and early rock & roll. The company was founded in 1987 by Klaus Heymann, a German-born resident of Hong Kong.Naxos is the largest...

; among his CDs on that label are recordings of all Tchaikovsky's Piano Concertos, the nine Beethoven symphonies (as transcribed for the piano by Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...

), and music by Godowsky, Medtner, Respighi

Ottorino Respighi

Ottorino Respighi was an Italian composer, musicologist and conductor. He is best known for his orchestral "Roman trilogy": Fountains of Rome ; Pines of Rome ; and Roman Festivals...

, Shostakovich, and Sergei Lyapunov

Sergei Lyapunov

Sergei Mikhailovich Lyapunov was a Russian composer and pianist.-Life:Lyapunov was born in Yaroslavl in 1859. After the death of his father, Mikhail Lyapunov, when he was about eight, Sergei, his mother, and his two brothers went to live in the larger town of Nizhny Novgorod...

. Critical acclaim has been high; Gramophone magazine has said that Scherbakov plays with "delicacy and affection", and the German Critics' Circle has twice awarded Scherbakov its top prize, once for a recording of Godowsky's sonata in E minor and again for his performance of the piano version of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. His record of Shostakovich's Twenty-Four Preludes and Fugues was labeled "a triumph" by ClassicsToday.com, and won him a classical award at Cannes in 2001.