Pianist Nicolas Namoradze was born in Tbilisi, grew up in Budapest and studied in New York. In 2018, at the age of 26, he won the Honens International Piano Competition, the world’s richest piano competition. Since then, he’s won admiring reviews from London to Berlin while his teacher, Emanuel Ax, has described Namoradze as being “set to become one of the truly important artists of his generation.” Namoradze’s new recording of little-known works by the British composer and pianist York Bowen is our February Recording of the Month. Clive Paget caught up with him in lockdown to discuss this admired but somewhat forgotten composer and the works Nicolas chose for his debut recording on Hyperion.

Nicolas Namoradze. Photo © Nathan Elson

What drew you to the music of York Bowen and how did the recording come about?
I was always interested in music that’s off the beaten path – undiscovered gems or pieces that simply aren’t played so much. A lot of it was Liszt at the beginning. I became attuned to features of a piece of music that might mean it doesn’t get played a lot: that it’s too difficult; that...