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Denis Matsuev is the featured artist in next season’s UBS Soundscapes: LSO Artist Portrait series. The Russian pianist is performing three great Russian piano concertos at the Barbican with the LSO under Valery Gergiev as part of five all-Russian programmes.

Matsuev, whose recording of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto was Gramophone’s Recording of the Month earlier this year, became internationally established after winning the XI International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1998. In his review, Jeremy Nicholas alluded to Matsuev’s ‘wonderful, gossamer-like touch’, while the New York Times has described him as ‘the successor to Russian keyboard lions like Kissin, Volodos and Horowitz’.

Matsuev’s first concert is on September 21, when he performs Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto in a programme that also includes Shostakovich’s Symphony No 10. The concert is broadcast live on BBC Radio 3.

On September 23 he performs Tchaikovsky’s Second Piano Concerto and then returns in November, after touring with the LSO and Gergiev to Slovakia, Italy and Greece, to give two performances of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No 2.