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Nikolai Demidenko - studied at the Pyotr Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow under Dmitri Bashkirov. In 1990 he moved to England, and in 1995 received British citizenship.

He works closely with the St Petersburg Philharmonic and its conductor, Yuri Temirkanov, and with this orchestra he has given concerts in Berlin, Budapest, Buenos Aires, Geneva, Glasgow, London, Lugano and Manchester. He also works with the Hermitage String Trio and other Russian artists living in London, such as the cellist Leonid Gorokhov and the pianist Dmitri Alexeev, with whom he performs piano works for four hands by such composers as Rachmaninov.

Nikolai Demidenko has worked with such outstanding conductors as Andrey Boreyko, Vladimir Fedoseyev, Thierry Fischer, Daniel Harding, Manfred Honeck, Mariss Jansons, Okko Kamu, Yakov Kreizberg, Alexander Lazarev, Susanna Mälkki, Tania Miller, Sir Roger Norrington, Gianandrea Noseda, Vasily Petrenko, Gerard Schwarz, Leif Segerstam, Evgeny Svetlanov, Yan Pascal Tortelier and Osmo Vanska.

His repertoire as a soloist includes works by Bach, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Mussorgsky, Clementi, Chopin, Schubert, Scarlatti, Schumann and others. He often gives recitals in London as part of the Great Performers series at the Barbican, the International Piano Series at the South Bank Centre and the London Pianoforte Series at the Wigmore Hall, and also at the Herkulessaal in Munich. He recently gave a concert at a Chopin festival in Paris, performing such works as the Rondo, Op. 1 and Polonaise-fantasy. He has also played in festivals in Cambridge, Dubrovnik, Eilat, New York, Oslo and Petworth.

This past season Demidenko gave concerts in Australia and New Zealand, where he played Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 3, Weber's Piano Concerto No. 2 and Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5; in Europe, meanwhile, he played Rachmaninov concertos with the Ulster Orchestra and the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Brahms's Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Hallé Orchestra led by Mark Elder and with the Bucharest Philharmonic Orchestra under Christian Mandeal. He also performed Prokofiev's Piano Concertos Nos. 1 and 3 in Spain and Italy, Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 in Belfast and Grieg's Piano Concerto with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.

For Hyperion Records, Nikolai Demidenko has recorded works by the following composers: Bach-Busoni, Chopin, Clementi, Liszt, Medtner, Mussorgsky, Prokofiev, Rachmaninov, Schubert, Schumann, Scriabin, Tchaikovsky and Weber, including piano concertos by Chopin and Medtner (these recordings won a Gramophone Award) and all the piano concertos by Prokofiev, which were recorded with the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Alexander Lazarev. In recent years, he has played Beethoven's 'Diabelli' Variations and 'Hammerklavier' Sonata, a cycle of Scarlatti Sonatas and a selection of works by Chopin (this last CD for the Munich label AGPL won the German Schallplattenpreis). In 2000, in connection with the 250th anniversary of the death of Johann Sebastian Bach, Nikolai Demidenko was one of four pianists invited to perform Das Wohltemperierte Klavier, subsequently released on DVD by EuroArts.