Musical experience and Central European culture: Alexander Gadjiev owes this on the one hand to his family, both of his parents are piano teachers and musicians, and on the other hand to his hometown, the Italian-Slovenian border town of Gorizia, a natural crossroads of peoples, cultures and languages. Both factors have had a decisive influence on his natural ability to absorb and process different musical styles and languages and to reshape them to his own taste.
He is the cultural ambassador of his hometown “Nova Gorica/Gorizia, European Capital of Culture 2025”.
In 2021 he won 1st prize at the International Piano Competition in Sydney as well as 2nd prize and the special “Krystian Zimerman Prize for the Performance of a Chopin Sonata” at the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw.
Gadjiev was a “BBC New Generation Artist” from 2019 to 2021, which gave him the opportunity to perform at such renowned British festivals and concert halls as Wigmore Hall, London, among others, and to collaborate with various orchestras. All of his concerts in the scope of this accolade were recorded and broadcast by the BBC. He was also the winner of the 2022 Terence Judd Award, which will lead to further engagements with the Hallé Orchestra through 2023.
At the age of 20 he won First Prize at the Hamamatsu International Piano Competition, where he also received the “Audience Award,” and at 22 he took First Prize at the “World Piano Masters” in Montecarlo.
Taught by his father, Alexander played with an orchestra for the first time at the age of nine and gave his first solo recital at the age of ten. In 2013 he finished his secondary education with top marks, enabling him to take part in the Premio Venezia–a competition reserved for the best young talents in Italy–where he won the 30th edition of this prize. He subsequently went on to study at the Mozarteum in Salzburg with Pavel Gililov and at the Hanns Eisler-Hochschule in Berlin with Eldar Nebolsin, graduating in spring 2022.
Alexander Gadjiev regularly accepts invitations from Europe, Asia and the USA, including from the Verbier Festival, the MiTo Festival in Turin, the “Chopin” Festival in Duszniki, the Rafael Orozco Piano Festival in Cordoba, the Ljubljana Festival, the Bologna Festival, Settimane Musicali at the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, the Festival Animato de Paris, the Salzburg Festival, the Festival International de Piano de La Roque d'Anthéron, Teatro La Fenice, Kioi Hall and Bunka Kaikan in Tokyo, Kitara Concert Hall in Sapporo, the Hyogo Performing Arts Center in Osaka, Salle Cortot in Paris, the Moscow Conservatory and the Aldeburgh Festival, as well as concert halls in Salt Lake City, Istanbul, Barcelona, Rome and Milan.
As a soloist, Alexander Gadjiev has performed with numerous orchestras such as the Orchestra di Padova e del Veneto, the Orchestra Sinfonica del Teatro della Fenice, the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, the Nagoya Philharmonic Orchestra, the Kyoto Symphony Orchestra, the Prague Symphony Orchestra and the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra.
In April 2022 he made his triumphant debut with the Orchestra Nazionale della RAI under the baton of Fabio Luisi, which led to an immediate re-invitation. In October/November 2022 he will tour Australia and Southeast Asia for more than 50 days, and a tour of Japan is announced for early summer 2023.
He has made numerous recordings for radio and television both in the studio and live in concert. In 2018 his debut album “Literary Fantasies” including pieces by Liszt and Schumann was released on the Acousense label, while the live recording from the International Piano Competition in Sydney was released on DECCA in 2021.
