Duo Fedorova & Takser

The Fedorova&Takser Piano Duo, known for their original transcriptions and creative media projects, was formed in 2010 by Daria Fedorova and Ilya Takser – Canadian musicians with Russian heritage and Ukrainian and Polish ancestry.

The Duo met in 2005 in Moscow at the prestigious Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, where Daria and Ilya were classmates. After graduation, the couple moved to Canada to pursue their Master‘s Degree with the acclaimed Canadian pianist Richard Raymond at the Conservatoire de Musique de Montréal.

Following in the footsteps of their renowned teacher, Daria and Ilya achieved their Master‘s degrees with the highest distinction. This achievement marked a milestone in the history of the Conservatoire de Musique de Montréal, as, for the first time, the Grand-Prix of the „Concours“ – the final examination conducted in the form of a contest among the ten conservatories of the Québec province aimed to pick one of the very best piano graduates – was jointly awarded. In fact, Daria and Ilya had to compete against each other. However, the distinguished members of the jury unanimously recognized the exceptional talents of both musicians, making it impossible to choose one over the other.

In 2014, Ilya Takser and Daria Fedorova settled in Vancouver and founded The Fedorova & Takser Piano Studio, a school that has produced many national and international piano competition winners and top music institution fellows.

Both Daria and Ilya are recipients of grants, scholarships, and top prizes at many international competitions as soloists and duo performers.

The Duo has an impressive repertoire list spanning versatile styles from Baroque and Classical to modern and jazz, including their own transcriptions. Rachmaninoff and Brahms, two of their main inspirations, are composers whose piano ensemble music the Duo performs extensively.

XIX The Golden Duets is the debut album by the Fedorova&Takser Piano Duo, recorded at Berlin‘s legendary Teldex Studio in 2023 with a GRAMMY-award-winning team led by the acclaimed sound producer Martin Sauer, known for his collaborations with great pianists such as Daniel Barenboim, Paul Lewis, and Bruce Liu, among many others.

In 2025, Ilya and Daria plan to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of their meeting by recording a new album featuring their original transcriptions of timeless music by Modest Mussorgsky.

Picture: Zuzanna Specjal