Igor Parfenov was born in Saint Petersburg in 1990. He started playing the piano at the age
of 6 and studied at a music school until 2006. At the age of 16 he studied at the pre-college
of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. In 2009 Igor Parfenov was accepted to the Saint
Petersburg Conservatory. During his studies he took part in various international
competitions and festivals and was awarded several prizes. He played in the following
competitions: the Chopin Competition in Estonia, the “Russian Piano Music on the Neva”
competition in Saint Petersburg, “The Art of the 20th Century” in Finland and the
Rachmaninoff Competition in Darmstadt.
He attended master classes with Dmitriy Baschkirov, Sontruad Speidel, José Ribera, Pavel
Egorov and Vladimir Mischuk, among others. In 2012/2013 and 2013/2014, Igor Parfenov
was invited to concerts as a scholarship holder of the Werner Richard-Dr. Carl Dörken
Foundation, both as a soloist and with orchestras such as the Sinfonietta Cologne, the
Bergische Symphoniker and the Rheine Symphony Orchestra. These included performances
at the “Summer, Castles, Virtuosos” festival.
From October 2011, he studied in the “Bachelor of Music” program at the Cologne
University of Music and Dance at the Wuppertal location under Prof. Josef Anton Scherrer.
In May 2012, Igor Parfenov won first prize at the Steinway Competition for selected
students from the universities of Essen, Düsseldorf and Cologne. In April 2014, he
performed Rachmaninoff’s second piano concerto with the university orchestra under the
direction of Prof. Werner Dickel in the Historische Stadthalle Wuppertal.
In 2023, Igor Parfenov received the Grand Prix at the Vivaldi International Music
Competition. In 2023, he completed his master’s degree with Prof. Lisa Eisner-Smirnova at
the Robert Schuhmann University of Applied Sciences in Düsseldorf.
In 2024, he inaugurated a new grand piano in the Historische Stadthalle with a solo
concert.