Trained in his hometown Tbilisi and Moscow, he began an international career as a soloist when he won the Marguerite Long Piano Competition in Paris in 1955.
[3] His great-aunt Lina Stern, a biochemist, physiologist and humanist, was the first female member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences.
[8] His playing of Rachmaninoff's music was described by a reviewer of the FAZ as of a "bold, sometimes steely elegance" ("kühne, manchmal stählerne Eleganz").
In 1991, he moved to the Reina Sofía School of Music in Madrid, where he held the chair for piano from its beginning in 1991.
[5] [9] He taught many internationally renowned artists such as Dmitri Alexeev,[10] Arcadi Volodos,[11] Nikolai Demidenko,[4] his daughter Elena Bashkirova,[10] Boris Bloch [de],[11] Jonathan Gilad,[6] Kirill Gerstein,[10] Stanislav Ioudenitch,[10] Denis Kozhukhin,[10] Eldar Nebolsin,[7] Luis Fernando Pérez,[10] Dang Thai Son,[11] Vestards Šimkus,[10] David Kadouch,[10] Jong Hwa Park,[10] Claudio Martinez Mehner,[10] Bruno Vlahek[10] and Plamena Mangova.
[10] He also taught at the International Piano Academy on Lake Como,[6] the Shanghai Conservatory, the Chapelle musicale Reine Élisabeth in Brussels,[7] the Paris Conservatoire, the Salzburg Mozarteum, the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, and the Encuentro de Música y Academia in Santander.