To mark the bi-centenary of the birth of Frederic Chopin, the celebrated Russian pianist Alexei Volodin performs a selection of some of the composer’s greatest works, including the Four Impromptus, and the powerful Sonata No. 3 in B Minor.

Alexei Volodin was born in St. Petersburg in 1977, and began taking piano lessons there at the age of nine. A year later he moved to Moscow, and in 1994 he enrolled at the Moscow Conservatoire. During 2001 and 2002 he studied at the Theo Lieven International Piano Foundation in Como. Alexei Volodin has won several prizes at different international competitions, including First Prize at the Concours Géza Anda in Zurich in 2003.

Frederic Chopin’s Four Impromptus were composed between 1834 and 1843. The first one to be written, the so-called “Fantasie-Impromptu” in C Sharp Minor, is the most well-known of the four, but was in fact the last to be published, and done so against the composer’s wishes. The turbulent and impressive Sonata in B Minor is a four movement work. It was written in 1844 and is the last of the three that he composed.