Vardan Mamikonian

Vardan Mamikonian is an Armenian pianist naturalized French.

Mamikonian was born in Armenia into a family of musicians. He began studying piano at the Yerevan Music School at the age of 6, then continued at the Moscow Conservatory and the prestigious Tchaikovsky Conservatory, where he became a student of Valery Kastelsky, the last pupil of the legendary teacher Heinrich Neuhaus. He then studied with the Russian virtuoso Lazar Berman and won first prize at the Balys Dvarionas piano competition in Vilnius in 1981, followed by further first prizes at the Lefébure Competition in Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1990 and at the World Music Masters in Monte Carlo in 1992. In 1991, Mamikonian emigrated to France and has lived in Paris ever since.

Vardan Mamikonian has performed in the United States with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Pacific Symphony, the National Symphony Orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl. He has also given recitals at the Musikverein in Vienna, Carnegie Hall in New York, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, the Herkulessaal in Munich, Wigmore Hall in London, the Tonhalle in Zurich, Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco and the Kennedy Center in Washington, under conductors such as Valery Gergiev, Andrey Boreyko, Vladimir Fedoseyev, Robert Spano, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Eliahu Inbal and Leonard Slatkin.

Vardan Mamikonian has recorded extensively for radio and television, notably for the German label Orfeo.