Although he was one of the clear audience favourites at the Chopin International Piano Competition in Warsaw in October 2010, he was not awarded the top prize, which led to a controversial debate in the Polish press and spontaneous invitations from the major Polish concert promoters and orchestras. He recently appeared in Brussels and toured Japan playing Beethoven’s Third Concerto and Chopin’s First. He opened the 2011 Sofia Festival in May with a solo recital and played at the Piano Festival La Roque d´Anthéron. In the 2011/12 season, he will make his débuts at the Berlin Philharmonie, Vienna Musikverein, London’s Royal Festival Hall and Tokyo’s Suntory Hall as well as in Stockholm, St. Petersburg, Milano, Munich, Freiburg, Düsseldorf and Budapest.

Bozhanov’s playing elicits keenly enthusiastic reactions from audiences and critics alike. “I never thought I would witness piano playing of this quality again,” exclaimed an elderly lady in Warsaw. “I heard Lipatti, Horowitz, Michelangeli in concert – Bozhanov is from the same planet.” One American music critic wrote that “Evgeni Bozhanov can produce more nuances of tone in a measure of music than most pianists find in a lifetime, but everything seems so organic,” while an Australian commentator declared that “Bozhanov belongs to a different generation of pianists – the Ignaz Friedman generation.”

Evgeni Bozhanov continues to work with his teacher Georg Friedrich Schenck in Düsseldorf.