Hailed as “a terrific pianist” by BBC Radio 3 and praised for his “fiery and exciting playing” (International Piano), Portuguese pianist Nuno Cernadas has emerged as a major voice in the interpretation of Alexander Scriabin’s piano music.
Born in Porto in 1988, Nuno Cernadas was trained at the music university of Porto (ESMAE), the Liszt Academy of Music (Budapest), the Musikhochschule Freiburg im Breisgau, and the Musikhochschule Karlsruhe, having studied with Fátima Travanca, Constantin Sandu, István Gulyás, Gilead Mishory, and Michael Uhde. Important influences in his trajectory include such prominent pianists as Vitaly Margulis, Anna Zassimova, Ralf Gothóni, Jan Michiels, Maria Lettberg, Boris Berman, and, most notably, Dina Yoffe and Håkon Austbø, with whom he worked throughout the years. He is the winner of several national Portuguese piano competitions as well as the 1st prize winner of the International Piano Competition “Pro‐Piano,” in Bucharest, Romania.
Cernadas has appeared as soloist alongside the Baden‐Baden Philharmoniker, Orquestra do Norte, Harmos Festival Orchestra, Remix Ensemble, and the Gulbenkian Orchestra, under the baton of Nuno Coelho, Tobias Drewelius, José Ferreira Lobo, and Dirk Vermeulen.
Several of his recitals and concerts with orchestra were broadcast live by Portuguese Television and Radio—Antena 2. A video recording of a piano recital was also produced by Euroclassical.
His recent recording of Scriabin’s complete piano sonatas, released by the Belgian label Etcetera Records in November 2024, has attracted wide international attention and acclaim: Luister (Netherlands) awarded his recording the top grade and placed him in a distinguished lineage alongside Igor Zhukov and Vladimir Horowitz, while Pizzicato (Luxemburg) described his approach as both “delicate and sensual,” noting that “his bold imagination never bores the listener.” The Portuguese newspaper Público called this recording “a discographic happening.”
He holds a PhD in the Arts from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, with the project “Let there be light! The creation of an informed colored-light performance of Alexander Scriabin's late piano sonatas,” supervised by Maarten Stragier and the world‐renowned pianists Jan Michiels and Håkon Austbø. His research has been presented in conferences in Brussels, Leuven, Stockholm, Lisbon, London and São Paulo.
Nuno Cernadas is Professor of Piano at LUCA School of Arts (Leuven) as well as Professor of Piano at the Koninklijk Conservatorium Brussel.
Contact Nuno Cernadas