Evgeny Zarafiants

Evgeny Zarafiants was born in Novosibirsk in 1959, into a family of musicians. From the age of six Zarafiants began studying the piano with his father, and at the age of eight he was fully recognized as a child prodigy and entered the Central School of Music at the Moscow-Conservatory, to study with Elena Howen. In 1975, Zarafiants went on to study at the Gnessin High School in Moscow. However, a youthful prank led to his being barred from the prestigious Moscow Conservatory, and instead he was sent to Orsk in the southern Urals. He graduated from the Orsk High School for Music with top honors in 1979. In 1980 he entered the Glinka Academy in Gorki, and after completing undergraduate studies with top honors he went on to complete post-graduate studies as well. During this period he won prizes in the All-Russian Competition and the Rachmaninov Competition and finally managed to launch something of a career within the Soviet Union. It goes without saying that outside Russia nothing was heard of the exciting new artist.
Zarafiants first started to be noticed after winning second prize in the inaugural lvo Pogorelich International Piano Competition held in Pasadena, California, in 1993. Since then, he has given many concerts, mainly in Croatia, where he now lives, in Germany and in Japan.
He has visited Japan regularly since September 1997, and has given both concerts and master classes all over the country. In 2004 he appeared with the Russian Philharmonic Orchestra, followed by an appearance in 2005 with the Czech Philharmonic, and in 2006 with the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra. He is also an enthusiastic chamber musician – his performances of the Schumann and Brahms piano quintets with the Zagreb String Quartet were particularly memorable.
Zarafiants has been a teacher at the Zagreb Academy of Music since 2006. He is also a prolific recording artist, having made nineteen CDs for ALM RECORDS {Kojima Recordings) in Japan. His recordings have been highly commended by prestigious publications such as the “Record Geijutsu” on a number of occasions. He has also made three disks for the Naxos label – one of which, Scriabin Preludes Volume 1, was listed in the “Top 10 Recordings of the Month” by the British “Gramophone” magazine. The profound and passionate playing of Evgeny Zarafiants, who was listed as one of the top 100 pianists in the world by the Japanese magazine "Ongaku-no-Tomo”, continues to give great pleasure to his ever-growing fan base.
[as of September 2021]