Tanin’s performances throughout are sensitive, honest, idiomatic and devoid of distracting eccentricities – Gramophone UK
…Le jeu tout en finesse… – Le Soir Belgique
Ein echter Gestalter – Pizzicato Luxembourg
After winning prizes at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels and the Géza Anda Competition in Zurich, Sergey Tanin became widely known to European audiences. The jury of the Géza Anda Competition praised his playing as “refined, pure and honest, reminiscent of the values of the great Russian piano school.” Sergey Tanin possesses an exceptionally broad repertoire, ranging from Rameau and Bach through the major composers of the Classical and Romantic periods to leading contemporary composers such as Thomas Larcher and Thomas Adès.
As a soloist, Sergey Tanin has performed with renowned orchestras including the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich under Christian Zacharias, the Bamberg Symphony under Jakub Hrůša, the Musikkollegium Winterthur under Theodor Guschlbauer, the Brussels Philharmonic under Kazushi Ono, the Mariinsky Symphony Orchestra, and the Sinfonieorchester Basel. His performances have taken him to major venues such as Bozar Brussels, the Tonhalle Zurich, the Salle Gaveau in Paris, the Stadtcasino Basel, the Salle Molière in Lyon, the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg and Van Clibern Concert Hall in Fort Worth (USA).
Sergey Tanin has also appeared at numerous international festivals, including Beethovenfest Bonn, the Bregenz Festival, Musikdorf Ernen, the Cervo Chamber Music Festival, the Samos Festival, the Festival St-Ursanne, and Swiss Alps Classics.
Highlights of the 2025/2026 season include debuts at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, in Vienna (Ehrbar Hall), and at the Auditorium Grafenegg with the Tonkünstler Orchestra, as well as appearances at the Davos Festival and Le Piano Folies du Touquet in France. Alongside his solo performances, Sergey Tanin is deeply committed to chamber music. During the current season, he performs with Esther Hoppe, Christian Poltéra, and Sharon Kam at the musicaAndeer Festival, and with violinist Anna Agafia Egholm, with whom he presents the complete cycle of Brahms violin sonatas.
His debut album on Prospero Classical, featuring works by Brahms, Liszt, and Prokofiev, was nominated for the International Classical Music Award (ICMA) in 2021 and received wide critical acclaim. His Schumann recording (2024) was named Recording of the Year by the Belgian magazine Crescendo. In 2023, the television channel 3sat broadcast the documentary My Rachmaninoff, in which Sergey Tanin reflects on his personal relationship to the composer’s life and work at Rachmaninoff’s Villa Senar on Lake Lucerne, and recorded the Six Moments Musicaux on the composer’s original grand piano. In 2020, Swiss television SRF portrayed his artistic journey in the documentary The Pianist Who Came in from the Cold.
Born in 1995 in Yakutia (Siberia), Sergey Tanin began playing the piano at the age of five and made his first appearance with the Moscow Symphony Orchestra at eleven. He studied with Irina Plotnikova at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, where he became a laureate of the European Piano Competition Bremen in 2016. In 2019, he moved to Switzerland to continue his studies with Claudio Martínez-Mehner as a recipient of the Swiss Federal Excellence Scholarship at the Music Academy Basel. In October 2020, he won First Prize and the Audience Prize at the Kissinger KlavierOlymp in Bad Kissingen.
