A graduate of the Moscow Conservatory where he studied with Aleksey Nasedkin, Vladimir Ovchinnikov is resident professor of piano at the Moscow Conservatory and guest professor of piano at Sakuyo University in Japan. He was awarded second place in the Montreal International Music Competition in 1980. In 1982, he was awarded joint second prize with Peter Donohoe in the International Tchaikovsky Competition (no first prize was awarded that year). In 1987, he was awarded first prize at the Leeds International Pianoforte Competition. In 2005, he received Russia's highest award and honor for musicians - the title "People's Artist of Russia", awarded by the Russian president.
He served as a chairman and a member of the jury at the International Tchaikovsky Competition, the International Tchaikovsky Competition for Young Musicians, the International Russian Rotary Children Music Competition and many others. Was appointed as a headmaster of the Central Music School of the Moscow Conservatory in 2011.
He appears regularly with such leading Russian orchestras as the Moscow Philharmonic; Moscow Radio Symphony and the St Petersburg Philharmonic; he also has a long-standing relationship with the Russian State Symphony Orchestra, and was a special favorite of Yevgeny Svetlanov, with whom he toured France, the Netherlands, North and South America.
Concerto appearances in Europe and North America have included the following:
- BBC Philharmonic
- Bournemouth Symphony
- Chicago Symphony
- Danish Radio Symphony
- Hague Residentie Hallé
- Leipzig Gewandhaus
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- Montreal Symphony
- National Symphony of Wales
- Netherlands Radio Symphony Orchestra
- Philharmonia
- Polish National Radio Orchestra
- Royal Liverpool Philharmonic
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- Royal Philharmonic
- Royal Scottish National
- Slovak Philharmonic
- Ulster Orchestra
- Zurich Tonhalle
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He has played under various conductors including:
- Yevgeny Svetlanov
- Vladimir Ashkenazy
- Matthias Bamert
- Rudolf Barshai
- Vladimir Fedoseyev
- Claus Peter Flor
- Valery Gergiev
- Mariss Jansons
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- Neeme Jarvi
- Alexander Lazarev
- Libor Pesek
- Gennadi Rozhdestvensky
- Sir Simon Rattle
- Yuri Simonov
- Stanislaw Skrowaczewski
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- Sir Georg Solti
- Walter Weller
- A. Vedernikov
- T. Sanderling
- J. Conlon
- M. Gorenstein
- M. Shostakovich
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Among his recordings are Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No. 1 coupled with Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition (Collins Classics), Rachmaninoff's Études-Tableaux, and Liszt's Transcendental Études, and Prokofiev's Piano Sonatas (EMI). Other recordings include sonatas for violin and piano by Grieg (together with the violinist Vinnitsky) - for the Russian Seasons label, also - Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Taneyev, Rubinstein for Gold Club
