Praised for his “sophisticated handling of sound”, “stupendous virtuosity”, “analytical intelligence, stamina, and sheer keyboard facility”, Abel Sánchez-Aguilera has performed in twelve countries of Europe and America, on stages such as the Jacqueline du Pré Music Building (Oxford), Mozarteum (Salzburg), Gasteig (Munich), Teatros del Canal (Madrid), Willem Twee toonzaal (‘s-Hertogenbosch), Théâtre du Châtelet (Paris), Scriabin Memorial Museum (Moscow), Bulgaria Chamber Hall (Sofia). He has appeared in festivals such as the Salzburger Festspiele, Musikfest Stuttgart and COMA (International Contemporary Music Festival, Madrid).
He is particularly devoted to the repertoire after 1900, large complex works and rarely performed music, and collaborates closely with living composers. In 2015 he performed Scriabin’s complete sonatas in Paris on the occasion of the centenary of the composer’s death. In 2022 he gave the world premiere of Kaikhosru Sorabji’s recently discovered, two-hour long Toccata terza (1955). His CD recordings of this work and the earlier Toccata seconda (1934) for the Piano Classics label have been acclaimed by the international press; the former has been called “a truly impressive feat” (Fanfare).
His two latest albums Phos and Skotos, collectively titled Mikrokosmos and released in 2025 by Novus Promusica, comprise a significant part of the piano music by Spanish composer Alejandro Román, most of it recorded here for the first time.
Upcoming performances include the world premiere of two large-scale works: Alistair Hinton’s monumental Piano Sonata no. 5 – which will be heard for the first time in early 2026 – and Sorabji’s seven-hour Piano Symphony no. 1 ‘Tāntrik’.
As editor and scholar he has prepared critical editions of several of Sorabji’s unpublished manuscripts (Toccata terza, Piano Symphonies nos. 0, 1 and 3, totalling over 1000 pages of printed music).
His most influential teachers include Fernando Puchol, Juan Carlos Martínez, Sebastián Mariné and Ya-Fei Chuang. He was awarded First Prize in the Alexander Skrjabin competition (Salzburg, 2015), First Prize and contemporary music award in the Open Piano Competition (2013), First Prize Musik der Extraklasse (2011) for his performance of Boulez’s Second Sonata, First Prize (piano category) and overall Third Prize in the Premio Città di Padova (2016), and the Prize of the Mozarteum Internationale Sommerakademie (2013), among others.
He holds a Master’s degree in Contemporary Music and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry. Prior to his full-time career as a pianist he worked as a biomedical researcher on leukaemia and stem cells in Madrid, Boston and Cincinnati.
ABEL SÁNCHEZ-AGUILERA 