Álvaro Cendoya

The son of a Basque father and an Iranian mother, Álvaro Cendoya was born in San Sebastián in 1960. He started his piano studies at his local conservatory. At the age of 25 he moved to Buenos Aires, where he studied with Bruno Leonardo Gelber, and later relocated to London for further tuition with Peter Feuchtwanger.

In 1989 he won the prize for the best interpretation of Spanish music at the Concurso Internacional Premio Jaén Piano. In 1993 he appeared as soloist in Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 at the Santander Palacio de Festivales, winning critical praise.

In 1995 he made his debut in Geneva at Victoria Hall playing Grieg’s Piano Concerto, and a year later made his London debut at Wigmore Hall. He went on to give recitals at St Martin-in-the-Fields, St John’s Smith Square and again at Wigmore Hall in 1998. Under the auspices of the Instituto Cervantes, in 1999 he played in the United States at the University of Connecticut and in 2000 at the American University of Beirut. In 2004 he gave two recitals in Tehran to help the victims of the earthquake in the city of Bam.

In the same year he began recording for Naxos two albums of music by the Basque composer Tomás Garbizu (Naxos 8.557630, 8.572096) and Ignacio Cervantes’ Danzas cubanas (Naxos 8.572456). He is a professor at Musikene, the Higher School of Music of the Basque Country.

Álvaro Cendoya is currently recording the complete piano music of Manuel M. Ponce across eight albums. Moderato malinconico, one of the pieces featured on the second album in the series (GP764), has exceeded two millions streams on Spotify to date.

Álvaro Cendoya – Un millón de Ponces