Giorgio Koukl
Giorgio Koukl (born 1953, Prague, Czech Republic) with family roots going back to Belarusian noble family of Grigori Minaiev, is a composer, pianist and musical journalist who lives in Lugano, a town located in Ticino, an Italian-speaking canton of southern Switzerland. Through studies with Rudolf Firkušný, Nikita Magaloff, Stanislav Neuhaus and Carlo Vidusso, Koukl was first introduced to the piano music of Bohuslav Martinů. Koukl, considered now as one of the major world specialists of Parisian music of the twenties and of the "silver age" composers from Saint Petersburg, has recorded the only one existing complete set  of solo piano music of Martinů, released between November 2006 and August 2009, a 5-CD set of complete vocal music of Martinů and a 2-CD set of Martinů's complete piano and orchestra for Naxos Records. A series of eight CDs of the complete solo piano music of Alexander Tcherepnin added to his discography the valuations as best CD of the month (four times), best CD of the year (2 times), so as the recordings of Vítězslava Kaprálová, Paul Le Flem (French prize Diapason d'Or), Witold Lutoslawski (first world recordings), Arthur Lourié (first world recording), Tibor Harsanyi, (a  project completed in January 2021, all first world recording), Carl Maria von Weber, Johannes Brahms, Alfons Szczerbiński and Alexandre Tansman. Recently he is working on the complete piano and two pianos work recording of Vittorio Rieti.