Arcadi Both of Volodos’s parents were professional choral singers, and it was this discipline that young Arcadi first studied at the St Petersburg Conservatory, subsequently studying conducting both there and at the Glinka Choir School. Volodos had played the piano from the age of eight, but it was not until he went to the Moscow Conservatory at the age of sixteen that he began to concentrate in earnest on this instrument, working with Galina Eguizarova who had also been the teacher of Radu Lupu.

At the age of twenty-one Volodos went to Paris to continue his studies with Jacques Rouvier at the Paris Conservatoire, then completed his tuition in Madrid with Dmitri Bashkirov at the Escuela Superior de Musica Reina Sofia. Volodos now lives in Spain, ...