Biographical Info

After graduating with a “Diploma of Distinction” from both the Central Music School and the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory, Dina Parakhina went on the become one of the youngest-ever members of the Central Music School faculty when she inherited the chair formerly held by her teacher, professor Tamara Bobovich. She occupied this post for fifteen years until she moved to the UK in 1996, and was one of the most-wanted pedagogues in her native Russia. She combined teaching with a busy performing career, collaborating with many outstanding instrumentalists, singers and conductors, as well as playing with major Russian orchestras, giving recitals and making TV and radio broadcasts at the most prestigious venues in Moscow and other cities of the former Soviet Union.

In 1988, after winning a competition, she started work as a solo pianist of the Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra, with which she regularly performed piano concertos by Mozart, Shostakovich and Rachmaninov while on extensive tours of France, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Italy and Ireland, as well as at the Bolshoi Theatre itself. A sought-after chamber musician, she participated in the Semaines Musicales Tours festival in France – giving recitals with Lyobov Kazarnovskaya, Gegem Grogoriam and Nikita Storojev – and the 125 Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory Festival in Germany, where, most notably, she gave a German radio première of the Rubinstein ’Cello Sonata with distinguished ’cellist Valentin Feigin, with whom she worked during his last years.

Since her move to England, her engagements have included regular appearances with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra in the Royal Albert Hall at the Proms, a solo recital dedicated to Rachmaninov at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester, and a performance of Shostakovich’s First Piano Concerto with the Lancashire Chamber Orchestra. Among her recent appearances are a recital with ’cellist Leonid Gorokhov and violinist Yuri Torchinsky which was twice broadcast on BBC Radio 3, and a recording of Mendelssohn’s Double Concerto with the BBC Philharmonic conducted by Vassily Sinaisky.

This season she has performed Stravinsky’s Petrushka with the LSO in the Barbican, toured with the BBC Philharmonic in Germany and Spain (where she also played Petrushka, which was broadcast on Radio 3 later). In April she performed Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Worthing Symphony Orchestra under John Gibbons.

Dina Parakhina is a professor of piano at the Royal College of Music,  Royal Northern College of Music and Chetham’s School of Music.