Parents Musaelyan's father, Aleksander Musaelyan, was a mining engineer, who took part in the construction of the first
Moscow Metro. His mother, Eleonor Musaelyan (née Balayan), an Honoured Cultural Worker of the Russian SFSR, was a music teacher; she studied under
Konstantin Igumnov and
Alexander Goedicke in the
Moscow Conservatory, and went on to work at the Conservarory's Central Music School.
Education Musaelyan's first piano lessons were with his mother. In 1958, he was admitted to the Central Music School of the Moscow Conservatory and studied with
A Sumbatyan, T Bobovitch, E Musaelyan and E Timakin. He later studied first with G Axelrod and Professor
Y Flier, a teacher and pianist who was also a People's Artist of the USSR. After Conservatory, Musaelyan entered the graduate school
Gnessin State Musical College and studied with Professor B Berlin.
Career He took part in the 1976
Vianna da Motta International Music Competition in Lisbon. That year he joined
Mosconcert and began to give concerts across the
USSR. In 1988,
Sviatoslav Richter took an interest in Musaelyan's career. Richter gave Musaelyan quite contradictory characterisations in his diaries. However, he began to support Musaelyan, and thanks to his help the pianist started to give concerts outside the Soviet Union. Since the late 80s, Musaelyan has toured in Europe, North and South America, Korea, and China. Also in 1988, Sergey Musaelyan met famous Finnish musicologist and journalist
Seppo Heikinheimo. Musaelyan gave more than 100 concerts in Finland for a year with Heikinheimo's help. In 1989, the pianist gave a recital for the
Red Cross in Geneva. Together with Araik Babajanyan, he founded the
Arno Babajanyan Memorial Foundation in 1990. Festivals in memory of Babajanyan have been organized in Moscow, Yerevan and Los Angeles. The first international chamber music festival to be held in
Mikkeli (
Finland) had Musaelyan as Artistic Director and
Vladimir Ashkenazy as Honorary President. After 2000, the pianist gave concerts in Russia and toured the United States, Denmark and Poland. In 2011, Sergey Musaelyan was involved in the creation of the Yakov Flier Piano Arts Development Fund. He participated in a festival to mark the 100th anniversary of Flier's birth in 2012. The festival was also attended by other students of Flier:
M.Pletnev with the
Russian National Orchestra,
V Feltsman, I Berkovich, D Ratser, A Zandmanis, M Abramyan, I Olovnikov and others. Since 2005, Musaelyan has also been engaged in teaching, giving master classes at
University of Texas–Pan American and the M.M.Ippolitov-Ivanov State Musical Pedagogical Institute in Moscow, and lecturing on pianistic art in different countries. Sergey Musaelyan's piano repertoire includes works from
Bach to contemporary composers. He has a particular focus on the works of
Chopin and
Rachmaninoff. Sergey Musaelyan has at various times performed with such conductors as
Vladimir Ashkenazy,
Valery Gergiev,
Ulf Soderblom,
Mikhail Pletnev,
Osmo Vanska,
Saulius Sondeckis,
Fuat Mansurov, Peter Dabrowski,
Kristjan Järvi, and Konstantin Krimets. == Honours ==