So here is the first post on January's featured performer, Boris Berezovsky.

“Here, surely, we have the truest successor to the great Russian pianists” (Gramophone)

Berezovsky was born on January 4, 1969 in Moscow, Russia. Boris studied at the Moscow Conservatory with Eliso Virsaladze and privately with Alexander Satz.

In 1988, following his London Debut at the Wigmore Hall, the Times described him as “an artist of exceptional promise,” and “a player of dazzling virtuosity and formidable power.” That description came full circle two years later when Berezovsky took the Gold Medal at the 1990 International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.

Of his various acclaimed and well received recordings, his complete recording of the complete Beethoven Concerti with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra with Thomas Dausgaard, the complete Rachmaninoff Preludes (May 2005) and the Complete Rachmaninoff Piano Concerti with the Ural Philharmonic Orchestra (August 2005) are some of the most prominent.

Berezovsky has a daughter, Evelyne Berezovsky (born 1991), who is also a pianist. He currently lives in Brussels.

The piece in the video is the fourth of Franz Liszt's Transcendental Etudes, "Mazeppa," considered one of the most difficult pieces for piano.