When he was six years old, he was admitted to the special school for young musicians in the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory, where his professors were Pavel Serebryakov[1] and Sophia Lekhovitskaya.
[3] At a very young age, he displayed exceptional gifts and when only 14 he became the youngest laureate in the history of the Johann Sebastian Bach International Music Competition at Leipzig, receiving from them the bronze medal.
He perfected himself at the higher Tchaikowsky Conservatory in Moscow in the class of Jakov Zak,[6] successor of the master Heinrich Neuhaus, and took the First Prize in all his paths of study.
In the USSR, he performed in duo with the cellist Alexey Lazko (appearing before the Leningrad Philharmonic Society in 1965), and in trio with Mirra Lvovna Furer-Lazko.
[8] The concert which he dedicated to the memory of the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould was proclaimed 'the best interpretation of the 1982–1983 season' in Belgrade.
The refined lyricism of his playing and his symphonic projection of sound, allied to the spiritual power of his discourse give a great authenticity to his interpretations, 'a feast of sound of a very great beauty: with him the music becomes again what it was at its origin, limpid, simple and pure.'