Alexander Davidovich Toradze was born on May 30, 1952, in Tbilisi, Georgian SSR, and was a Georgian-born American pianist. He began playing with an orchestra at age nine and studied at the Moscow Conservatory under Yakov Zak, Boris Zemliansky, and Lev Naumov. In 1977, Toradze won the silver medal at the Fifth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. He requested asylum in the United States while touring with the Bolshoi Symphony Orchestra of Moscow in 1983. He served as a professor of piano at Indiana University South Bend from 1991 to 2017, and performed with major orchestras worldwide, including the Berlin Philharmonic and the New York Philharmonic. Toradze recorded for Philips and Angel/EMI, notably recording Prokofiev's five piano concertos (1998) with Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra. He passed away on May 11, 2022, in South Bend, Indiana.
