Alexander Tselyakov was born in Baku in the former Soviet Union in 1954. From an early age, Alexander demonstrated a keen and devoted interest in music, undoubtedly influenced by his musician parents. By the time he reached his late teens, Alexander Tselyakov was studying at the prestigious Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow with Lev Naumov (custodian of the Heinrich Neuhaus methods that are credited with producing the extraordinary strain of twentieth-century Russian keyboard masters such as Gilels and Richter).
By the mid-1980s, Alexander was combining a busy teaching career at two Russian music institutes, as well as winning awards and being appointed concert piano soloist to the Byelorussian State Philharmonic Orchestra. His awards included prizes at the Tokyo International Piano Competition (1983) and at the famed International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow (1986). Critics in Russia considered him to be an excellent pianist with a profound musical intellect, both in solo repertoire and in concertos, in which he has performed under the batons of such legendary Russian conductors as Evgeni Svetlanov, Gennadi Rozhdestvensky, Vasily Sinaisky. Alexander Tselyakov has toured the world as a soloist and with orchestras in Japan, Germany, Italy, Israel, Spain, Portugal, Finland, the former Yugoslavia, Denmark, Netherlands, the United States and here in Canada, where he has so far embarked on seven cross-country tours.
In 1991, Alexander and his family left Russia for Israel. There, too, he made a tremendous impression, winning the Israel Piano Competition in 1993, and playing in recital for such dignitaries as the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (Alexander has also performed for Mikhail Gorbachev). While in Israel, Alexander Tselyakov continued to win international prizes, two in Italy alone. In 1994, Alexander Tselyakov immigrated to Canada. He made his debut in Toronto in December 1994 to great acclaim. Recitals across the country soon started to materialize. The comments were always positive: “A phenomenal pianist”; “remarkable Russian-born master is our greatest pianist”; “one of the outstanding pianists living and performing in Canada today!”. That indescribable something extra was beginning to have its impact and continues to do so. Alexander Tselyakov is fast becoming an established, accomplished and respected special talent on the Canadian as well as the international scene.
"He ( Alexander Tselyakov) represents the best aspect of Russian pianism and all its attributes: Rich, warm, colorful tone production; wide dynamic range that verges from truly hypnotic pianissimos to thunderous-but-never harsh or violent fortissimos, steady-yet-flexible rhythm, a lucid, intellectualized, (but never dry or off putting) structural approach, and best of all a touchingly direct, unfussy musical approach, and a way of playing that produces everything he did with a minimum of fuss and fanfare. In other words, there are many well known aspects of the Russian style, and Mr. Tselyakov gratifyingly recalled the better aristocratic manner of those giants, Rachmaninoff and Moiseiwitsch. Tselyakov‚s robust, sonorous way effectively synthesized the emotional balance of Artur Rubinstein and the more highly-strung febrile quality of Horowitz"Harris Goldsmith, New York Concert Review, Spring 2003 . „Mastery of the large-scale performance (was) served by absolute technical security and great delicacy, (and) freedom”- Musical Opinion , UK (September- October Issue, 2002).