Alexander Gadjiev plays a solo piano recital at the Church of the Assumption in Osor on August 2, 2026, starting at 9 pm. For a pianist who not quite five years ago stood at the centre of the most closely watched classical competition in the world, this is a rarely intimate setting.

Gadjiev, who competes under the flags of Slovenia and Italy, took second place at the eighteenth International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw in October 2021, sharing the prize with Kyohei Sorita of Japan. He also received the „Krystian Zimerman” prize for the best performance of a Chopin sonata, which in pianists' circles carries almost the same weight as the placing itself. The competition ran from October 2 to 23, 2021, and the winners were announced on the evening of October 20.

He built his education with his father, the acclaimed Russian pianist Siavush Gadjiev, at the Slovenian music education centre „Emil Komel” in Gorizia. That is the city on the border between Italy and Slovenia, which explains why two countries stand in his biography without contradiction. The way he plays Chopin is what the jury rewarded: interpretations that do not run from the text, yet are not content to replicate tradition either.

The Osor Music Evenings take place in a church on the island of Lošinj, right at the strait that separates it from Cres, in a space whose acoustics need no amplification and where every wrong note is heard. Tickets are sold through entrio.hr. For an audience from Macedonia holidaying on the Kvarner, this is a date where the ticket does not match the level of the performer - in the audience's favour.