Denis Kozhukhin was born into a family of musicians in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia; he concluded his piano studies 4,500 km further southwest, in Madrid, under the tutelage of renowned piano pedagogue Dmitri Bashkirov. In 2010, Denis Kozhukhin won First Prize at the Concours Reine Elisabeth in Brussels, and the event marked the beginning of a brilliant concert solo career. But the open-minded young pianist also loves to dialogue with chamber music partners, impressing audiences with his joy of music making, his virtuosity, and his sensitive interpretations. Apart from meticulously exploring a work’s musical architecture, Kozhukhin’s objective is to penetrate a piece emotionally. “As a human being I need to feel totally engaged in the music I play. Otherwise, we could just leave it up to machines,” he remarks. In the LWL Museum of Art and Culture in Münster, Denis Kozhukhin presents a mellifluously lyrical programme with Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata and Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words, which the composer himself described as “music that fills the soul with a thousand things better than words”. Kozhukhin will likewise feature several of Edvard Grieg’s rarely performed Lyric Pieces.