Sergei Nakariakov

Born at Gorky in 1977, Sergei Nakariakov made his first record at fifteen and has spent the career since demonstrating, instrument in hand, that the trumpet and the flugelhorn have a larger literature than anyone supposed. The demonstration is made in transcription: Haydn's First Cello Concerto and Tchaikovsky's Rococo Variations, both gathered on the 2000 disc No Limit, are taken on the flugelhorn with the phrasing of a string player, and the mellower instrument has become as much his voice as the trumpet. The discography runs from Haydn and Mozart to Gershwin, with orchestras including the Philharmonia and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. Jan Schmidt-Garre's film of 2004, No More Wunderkind, caught him at the point where a prodigy's career either stops or turns into a musician's. Since 2022 he has played instruments built for him by AR Resonance. He was heard with the Sofia Philharmonic in May 2021. He began at the piano at six and turned to the trumpet after an injury, taught and guided by his father Mikhail Nakariakov, a pianist who prepared much of the arranged repertoire his son went on to play. An appearance at Ivo Pogorelich's festival in Bad Wörishofen in 1991 came in the year the family left for Israel, and from 1993 he has been based in Paris. Peter Ruzicka, Uri Brener, Enjott Schneider and Jörg Widmann have written for him, and he has played in duo with the pianist Maria Meerovich and with his sister Vera Okhotnikova.