Nikolai Medtner has been played on NTS in shows including Tafelmusik w/ Francesco Fusaro, featured first on 13 January 2020. Songs played include Romantic Sketches for the Young, Op. 54, Three Arabesques, Op. 7 and Sonata Romantica In B Flat Minor Op. 53 No. 1.

The youngest of five children, Nikolai Medtner was born in Moscow on the Russian Orthodox Christmas Eve. A younger contemporary of Rachmaninoff and Scriabin, he wrote a substantial number of compositions, all of which include the piano. His life's work consists of fourteen piano sonatas, three more with violin, three piano concerti, a piano quintet, two works for two pianos, many shorter piano pieces, and 108 songs including two substantial works for vocalise.

His 38 piano pieces called Skazki (generally known as "Fairy Tales" in English but more correctly translated as "Tales") contain some of his most original music and are as core to his output as the piano sonatas.

Medtner first took piano lessons from his mother until the age of ten, when he entered the Moscow Conservatory. He graduated in 1900 at the age of 20, taking the Anton Rubinstein prize, having studied under such teachers as Pabst, Sapellnikoff, Safonov, and Taneyev. Despite his conservative musical tastes, Medtner's compositions were highly regarded by his contemporaries and his skills as a piano virtuoso were second only to Rachmaninoff. To the consternation of his family, but with the support of his former teacher Taneyev, he soon rejected a career as a performer and turned instead to composition, becoming one of the few composers who took up the musical challenge laid down by Beethoven in his late piano sonatas and string quartets, which served as the starting point for Medtner's own works.

During the years leading up to the 1917 Russian Revolution, Medtner lived at home with his parents. It was during this time that Medtner fell in love with Anna Mikhaylovna Bratenskaya, a well-regarded violinist and the young wife of his older brother Emil. Emil was later interned in Germany, where he had been studying when World War I broke out, and generously gave Anna her freedom to marry his brother. Medtner and Anna were married in 1918.

Unlike his friend Rachmaninoff, Medtner did not leave Russia until well after the Revolution. Rachmaninoff secured Medtner a tour of America and Canada in 1924. His recitals were often all-Medtner evenings consisting of sonatas interspersed with songs and shorter pieces. Medtner never adapted himself to the commercial aspects of touring and concerts became infrequent. Esteemed in England, he settled in London in 1936, modestly teaching, playing and composing to a strict daily routine.

Hardship really hit at the outbreak of the Second World War; his income from German publishers disappeared and ill health became an increasing problem. His devoted pupil Edna Iles gave him shelter in Warwickshire where he completed his Third Piano Concerto, performing it at a 1943 Promenade Concert. In 1946 the unexpected happened. The Maharaja of Mysore, (part of India and state of Karnataka now), His Highness Jayachamaraja Wodeyar Bahadur, himself a honorary Fellow of Trinity College of Music, London, in 1945 and the first president of the Philharmonia Concert Society, London in 1948, founded a Medtner Society, London in 1949 to record all of Medtner’s works. Medtner was already in declining health but managed to record his three Piano Concertos plus sonatas, chamber music, numerous songs and shorter works before his death in London in 1951. In one of these recordings he partnered Benno Moiseiwitsch in his two-piano work entitled "Russian Round-Dance", Op 58 No 1, and accompanied Elisabeth Schwarzkopf in several of his lieder, including The Muse, a Pushkin setting from 1913. These historic recordings demonstrate a forceful creative personality undimmed by failing health. In gratitude to his patron, Medtner dedicated his Third Piano Concerto to the Maharaja of Mysore.

He died at his home in Golders Green, London in 1951, and is buried in Hendon.