Nikolai Lvovich Lugansky was born on 26 April 1972 in Moscow to parents who were research scientists. He is said to have played a Beethoven sonata by ear at the age of five, before he could read music. He trained at the Moscow Central Music School and the Moscow Conservatory, where his teachers included Tatiana Kestner, Tatiana Nikolayeva and Sergei Dorensky. He won prizes at a series of competitions during the late 1980s and early 1990s, most notably the silver medal at the 1994 International Tchaikovsky Competition, where no first prize was awarded. He lives in Moscow and teaches at the Moscow Conservatory.

Lugansky is regarded as one of the leading exponents of the Russian piano school, particularly admired in Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Debussy and Franck, and he has also become a noted interpreter of Wagner transcriptions. He began recording for Melodiya and Vanguard Classics in the 1990s and has since made discs for Warner Classics, Erato, Pentatone, Onyx, Deutsche Grammophon and Naïve, signing an exclusive contract with Harmonia Mundi in 2018. His chamber and concerto partners have included Vadim Repin, Joshua Bell, Mischa Maisky, Leonidas Kavakos and Anna Netrebko, and he has worked with conductors such as Riccardo Chailly, Kurt Masur, Mikhail Pletnev and Yuri Temirkanov. He has been an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Arts since 2012.

Sources:

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