Born on November 9, 1939, in Moscow.
He graduated from the seven-year Gnesin Moscow Music School (class of Sofia Devenishskaya, 1955), and from the Gnesin Special Secondary Music School (MSSMSH, class of Moisey Feigin, 1958). In 1963, he graduated from the Gnesin State Musical and Pedagogical Institute, and in 1967 he completed his postgraduate studies there (class of Teodor Gutman).
Since 1963, he has taught at the Piano Performance Department of the Gnesin State Musical and Pedagogical Institute (now the Gnesin Russian Academy of Music), serving as Head of the Department from 1997 to 2023. Since 2002, he has also been Professor of Piano at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory. He taught at Smith College in Northampton (USA) in 1988–89 and at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester (USA) in 2005.
He began giving solo recitals during his student years and has since maintained an intensive concert career as both soloist and chamber musician. A significant part of his repertoire is devoted to the Romantic composers Robert Schumann, Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt, and Johannes Brahms. His most notable artistic achievements are associated with the performance of works by Alexander Scriabin, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Nikolai Medtner, and Pyotr Tchaikovsky.
Among his students are Dmitry Burshtein, Konstantin Lifschitz, Mikhail Mordvinov, Vitaly Kuleshov, Mikhail Lidsky, Ekaterina Derzhavina, Sergei Khitev, Anna Yushina, Ivan Tikhomirov, Alexander Blok, Vladimir Sverdlov, Natalia Rubinstein, Irina Mezhueva, Mikhail Kandinsky, Yulianna Avdeeva, Konstantin Shamray, Ekaterina Rubinova, Roman Martynov, Dmitry Ablogin, and Ekaterina Tarasova.
He has toured in Romania, Germany, Finland, the Netherlands, Italy, the USA, Costa Rica, Cuba, Japan, Taiwan, China, England, South Korea, and Ireland. He regularly gives master classes in many countries, including the Netherlands, Italy, Japan, the USA, Finland, England, Ireland, Portugal, South Korea, Taiwan, Costa Rica, Israel, Belgium, France, China, and on Mallorca (Spain), among others.
He has served on the juries of numerous competitions, including:
- Chair of the jury of the First All-Russian Youth Gnesin Piano Competition (Moscow, 1996).
- Jury member of the Ferenc Lamond International Competition (Glasgow, 1996, 1998).
- Chair of the jury of the Second and Third All-Russian Youth Gnesin Piano and Violin Competitions (Moscow, 2000, 2003).
- Jury member of the Sergei Rachmaninoff International Competition (1997, 2002, 2008).
- Member, then Chair of the jury of the «Europe—Asia» International Piano Competition in Orsk (jury member at the 2nd competition, 2004; chair at the 3rd and 4th competitions, 2005, 2007).
- Jury member of the Eduard Flipse International Competition (Rotterdam, three times) and of the International Competition in Andorra (twice), as well as the International Concerto Competition in Manchester (2009).
- Jury member of the First Stanislav Neuhaus International Piano Competition (Chelyabinsk, 2007, 2011).
- Chair of the jury of the Open Youth Piano Competitions dedicated to Alexander Scriabin (2007) and Sergei Rachmaninoff (2013).
- Jury member of the television competition «The Nutcracker» (twice).
- Jury member of the 23rd International «Roma» Competition in Rome (2013).
- Chair of the jury of the International Youth Rachmaninoff Piano Competition in Veliky Novgorod (2015, 2018).
- Jury member of the International Piano Competition in Manchester (2016).
- Chair of the jury of the Heinrich Neuhaus Festival in Moscow (2018).
His main scholarly interests focus on the life and work of Sergei Rachmaninoff. He has published a number of articles on Rachmaninoff in the journals «Soviet Music» and «Musical Life». He was one of the creators of television films about Rachmaninoff in Russia and in the United Kingdom and hosted the series «In Rachmaninoff’s Footsteps» on Russian television.
He is the author of more than 40 articles on issues of piano pedagogy and performance, as well as a series of annotations for LP and CD releases. He has also created more than 40 radio programs about outstanding performers of the 20th century for the Orpheus and Radio Russia stations.
Selected recordings include:
- CD «Shostakovich» (with violinist Ilya Grubert), released in the Netherlands.
- CD «Scriabin, Medtner, Rachmaninoff,» released in France.
- LPs on the Melodiya label (Scriabin, Medtner, and others).
The Japanese label Denon has released more than ten CDs by Vladimir Tropp featuring music by Schumann, Chopin, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Scriabin, Rachmaninoff, Medtner, and miniatures by Russian composers. One of the three CDs in the series «Russian Piano Miniature» received the Record Academy Award of Japan as the best classical recording of the year.
He is an Honored Art Worker of the Russian Federation and an Honored Member of the Moscow Musical Society. He serves on the faculty of the Piano Festival and Summer School in Manchester (UK) and is a laureate of the George Enescu International Competition in Bucharest (1970). He is Vice President of the Rachmaninoff Society in Moscow, an Honorary Member of the «Scriabin in America» Society, a member of the Glenn Gould Friends’ Association in Canada, an active member of the International Scriabin Society, a member of the Presidium of the Moscow Musical Society, and Chair of its Piano Music Commission. He is also an Honorary Professor of the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing (China).
In 2020, Vladimir Tropp received a Letter of Appreciation from the Russian Academy of Education.
