DANIIL Trifonov played his first concerto at the age of eight and lost one of his baby teeth during the performance, or so the story goes. He won the Chopin Competition at 19 and stormed the Arthur Rubinstein Competition and the Tchaikovsky Competition within the space of a few weeks aged 20.

That was just a few years ago. He has earned the respect of some of the great nobility of the piano world – Martha Argerich and Elisabeth Leonskaja are both reputedly fans – and he reveres the art of old-fashioned gravitas right back. “Both of my teachers came down the Heinrich Neuhaus line,” he tells me with clear pride in his voice, and when I ask which pianists he tends to listen to, he lists names from a century ago: Rachmaninov, Horowitz, Friedman. Oh, and in true line of the old Russian masters he is also a composer himself. During our interview he mentions as a casual aside that he’s just been finishing off the orchestration for his Double Concerto for Violin and Piano.

Trifonov was born in 1991 in Nizhniy Novgorod, the same central Russian city that produced fellow whiz kid Denis Kozhukin. Something in the waters, you might say, but Kozhukin and Trifonov are made of pretty different stuff. The former delivers a warm storm of heft and brawn, a very muscular kind of musical poetry. Trifonov’s technique is more quicksilver: all flash and nuance, glimmering shoals of notes that can turn on a dime. His fingers are long and willowy and seemingly able to multitask to the nth degree. While he sings steel-edged melodies with one group of digits, he uses the others to paint the most intricate and subtlest of hues.

Even more thrilling than all that is Trifonov’s sense of musical adventure, his intense inquisitiveness, his impassioned spontaneity. Anyone who heard his Edinburgh International Festival debut in 2012 will remember that morning at the Queen’s Hall: a gangly 21-year-old glancing shyly out to the audience through lanky curtained hair then proceeding to hurtle through two power hours of Scriabin, Stravinsky, Debussy and Chopin. He played four encores. He looked like he could have gone on for 40.

Thing is, Trifonov’s artistry appears to be remarkably well-adjusted. Sure, there’s an acute intensity, but there’s buoyancy, too, as if he’s just having too much fun to stop. One of his press photos – one that is used in the EIF brochure – shows him leaping gleefully high in jeans and trainers, poised for action in mid air. There’s a look of genuine blithe spirits about it. As a child he had plenty of non-musical hobbies (reading, geography, football) but he tells me that as soon as he began playing piano aged five it became his “everyday life."

"I loved discovering what kind of colours can be created. I remember hearing Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy on an LP when I was 11 or 12 and it making a huge impression on me. It’s the impact that the harmonic structure creates: it points right into the soul.” Later he began playing Scriabin himself. “I’ve always loved his music,” he said. “I have a similar relationship with Chopin.”

Did the technique always come easily? He paused before answering. “Every piece has its own challenges. I’ve been playing Chopin and Scriabin since I was a teenager so their music is really under my skin. Other composers – Schubert, for example – only came later. I still find Schubert very difficult.” It’s a telling response from a pianist whose recitals encompass through some of the most herculean music in the repertory: he’s perfectly aware that some of the biggest challenges are often the most apparently simple and elegant.

For now, though, Trifonov seems indefatigable, happy to flit and thunder around the keyboard for hours. What’s his trick for not seizing up? “It’s very important to not allow any tension while playing,” he advises. He swims, does yoga and practises an ancient Chinese breathing meditation called qigong. “Even in the most technically demanding parts, the motion of hands should be natural. And although this might sound strange, we can learn a lot from animals. The way they use their bodies is often much more natural than the way we do. All of our muscles should be engaged during any movement: tension arises when we try to artificially separate them.”

This summer Trifonov returns to Edinburgh for an International Festival residency of three concerts that together should make up a thorough portrait of the artist. His solo recital has been upped from Queen’s Hall to Usher Hall with a programme hefty enough to fill the bigger space and then some: Brahms’s arrangement of Bach’s D minor Chaconne, Rachmaninov’s First Sonata and Liszt’s Grandes études de Paganini – music Trifonov recently recorded and which he describes as “the most complete and revealing pictures of Liszt as a composer”. Also in the Usher Hall, he joins the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and conductor Daniel Harding to play Beethoven’s sparkling and mercurial First Piano Concerto.

Over at the Queen’s Hall, the third concert of Trifonov’s EIF residency is a chamber recital of music by Rachmaninov: the Trio élégiaque in D minor Opus 9 with violinist Gidon Kraemer and cellist Giedr? Dirvanauskait?, and the First and Second Suites for piano duo with Sergei Babayan – which should be something special. Babayan is a great Russian pianist of the Heinrich Neuhaus line; he is also the teacher for whom Trifonov moved to Cleveland in 2009. “His musical vision is exciting and unusual,” Trifonov once told me. “But he also asks his students to use their own creativity to learn.”

Trifonov still plays all of his new programmes for Babayan, still very much the pupil to Babayan’s master despite all the international accolades. So how does it feel to sit together on stage as colleagues, as duet partners? “Well, when we are playing together, Sergei insists on creating a mutually equal environment and welcomes comments from both of us,” Trifonov explains. “I think there is something very special in terms of reaching an interpretative understanding while performing together with someone whom you musically trust absolutely.” Absolute musical trust sounds a pretty good place to start.

Daniil Trifonov plays three concerts at this year’s Edinburgh International Festival: a solo recital at the Usher Hall on August 17, Beethoven’s First Concerto with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra at the Usher Hall on August 19 and a chamber recital at the Queen’s Hall on August 22.