Alexander Melnikov completed his studies at the Moscow Conservatory with Lev Naumov. Among his most musically formative experiences were his encounters with Svjatoslav Richter, who regularly invited him to his festivals in Russia and France. He has won prizes at major competitions such as the International Robert Schumann Competition (1989) and the the Concours Musical Reine Elisabeth in Brussels (1991). His musical and programmatic choices are often unusual. Very early Alexander Melnikov began to deal with historical performance practice.
He received significant impulses from Andreas Staier and from Alexei Lubimov, with whom he has collaborated on numerous projects. He regularly appears on stage with renowned early music ensembles such as the Freiburger Barockorchester, Musica Aeterna or the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin. Among the orchestras with which Alexander Melnikov has appeared as a soloist are the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Philadelphia Orchestra, DR Elbphilharmonie Orchester, HR-Sinfonieorchester, as well as the Munich Philharmonic, Rotterdam Philharmonic, and BBC Philharmonic. He has worked with conductors such as Mikhail Pletnev, Teodor Currentzis, Charles Dutoit, Paavo Järvi, Thomas Dausgaard, and Valery Gergiev. With Andreas Staier he worked out a pure Schubert program for four hands, which they recorded together and play regularly in concert. An intensive chamber music cultivation with the cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras is an indispensable part of Alexander Melnikov's work.
Chamber music concerts with his long-standing duo partner Isabelle Faust are also extremely important to him. Their joint recording of the complete Beethoven violin sonatas for harmonia mundi, which has won the Gramophone Award and been nominated for a Grammy, has become a reference recording. In 2015, her recording of the Brahms sonatas for violin and piano was released, followed by recordings of sonatas for piano and violin by Mozart in 2018 and 2021. Shostakovich's Preludes and Fugues, op. 87, also released by him on harmonia mundi, won, among others, the 2011 BBC Music Magazine Award, the Choc de classica 2010 and the Jahrespreis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik. In 2011, BBC Music Magazine named this album as one of the 50 most important recordings of all time.
Together with Isabelle Faust, Jean-Guihen Queyras, Pablo Heras-Casado and the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, Alexander Melnikov recorded a Schumann trilogy with the Concertos and Piano Trios (released 2015-16), as well as Beethoven's Triple Concerto (2021). In 2018, his critically acclaimed recording "Four Pieces, Four Pianos" was released; he also performed the Prokofiev's complete piano sonatas. In the 2022/23 season, Alexander Melnikov will perform worldwide with numerous programs.
As a soloist, he will present the project "Many Pianos", a program on several instruments, each reflecting the style of its time, and will play concerts with the Kammerorchester Basel, the Dresdner Philharmonie, the Stuttgarter Philharmoniker, the Koninklijk Concertgebouw Orkest Amsterdam, the Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra or the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, with conductors such as Ariane Matiakh, Teodor Currentzis, Dan Ettinger, Thomas Zehetmair or Heinz Holliger. Other highlights of the season include invitations to Paris, to London's Wigmore Hall, to a concert tour in Japan with the conductor Maxim Emelyanychev, as well as several chamber music concerts in various formations with partners such as Teunis van der Zwart, Sol Gabetta, Isabelle Faust and Jean-Guihen Queyras.