Mikhail Pletnev was born in 1957 in Arkhangelsk, Soviet Union, and trained at the Moscow Central Music School before entering the Moscow Conservatory under Yakov Flier and Lev Vlassenko. He rose to international prominence at age 21 by winning the Gold Medal at the 1978 Tchaikovsky International Competition. In 1990, with support from Mikhail Gorbachev, he founded the Russian National Orchestra, the first non-government-supported orchestra in Russia since 1917, becoming its principal conductor.

Pletnev is celebrated both as a virtuoso pianist, especially in Russian repertoire (Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin), and as a conductor and composer; he won a Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance in 2005 and multiple Russian State Prizes. His recordings for Deutsche Grammophon and Pentatone are widely regarded as benchmark interpretations of Russian piano and orchestral music.

Sources:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Pletnev