Pianist and composer Valentin Malinin was born in Nizhny Novgorod in 2001. He studied piano with Mira Marchenko at the Central Music School and with Kseniya Knorre at the Conservatory in Moscow. In addition, he took private piano lessons with Mikhail Pletnev, Boris Bloch, Kirill Gerstein, Stanislav Ioudenitch and Pavel Nersesyan. Valentin won second prize and the silver medal at the International Tchaikovsky Competition, and is also the winner of the 25th International Scriabin Competition (Italy), laureate of the International F. Busoni Piano Competition (Italy) and winner of the Hortense Anda-Bursary at the Concours Géza Anda 2024. Moreover, he participated in international music festivals such as the Rheingau Music Festival (Germany), the Rafael Orozco Piano Festival (Spain) and the Faces of Contemporary Piano Playing (Russia). Valentin Malinin is also a prize winner at international competitions for composers. In 2022, he released a CD on the Naxos label featuring music by Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Scriabin and Granados, as well as his own piano fantasy, “The Pearl Fishers“.