Alexander Melnikov has earned a reputation as one of the finest Russian pianists of his generation. He was born in Moscow in 1973 and began his music studies at the age of 6 at Moscow’s Central Music School, then continued at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatoire from where he graduated in 1997 in the class of professor Lev Naumov. Later he completed his post-graduate studies in Munich with Elisso Wirssaladze and at the Fondazione per il Pianoforte (Lago di Como, Italy) where he had lessons with Andreas Staier and Carl-Ulrich Schnabel among others.