Jury

Milana Chernyavska, a German artist with Ukrainian roots. Looking back at her impressive career, she established herself as one of the leading pianists and pedagogues of our times. Her critics agree with Alfred Brendel, who wrote that “Happiness was complete when one listened to Milana Chernyavska”. Since 2009 she is a piano professor at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz, Austria. She is also a professor at the International Music Academy in the Principality of Liechtenstein and at the Reina Sofia Escuela Superior de Musika in Madrid. With her doctorate theses "The evaluation and pedagogical aspects of the theory of interpretation" she leads a discourse on insights from a perspective of musicology.

CordeliaHöfer was born in Munich/Bavaria. She completed her studies in piano at the universities in Salzburg (Hans Leygraf) and Munich (Klaus Schilde, Hugo Steurer) with highest honors. In Salzburg she also studied conducting (Gerhard Wimberger) and chamber music. 1979 she won first prize of the „Kurt Leimer Competition“of Mozarteum in Salzburg. She acquired further valuable inspiration from Wilhelm Kempff , Sandor Vegh, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Tatjana Nikolajewa and Elisabeth Leonskaja. At the age of 15 she gave her debut in Munich with orchestra performing Carl Maria Weber's Konzertstück op.79. Her extensive concert experience involving solo appearances with renowned orchestras took her to many countries in Europe, to the USA, Korea, China and Japan.

First prize winner of the prestigious Concours de Genève in 2001, Roland Krüger performed in many important international venues such as the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, the Laeiszhalle in Hamburg, the Philharmonic Hall of Cologne, the Victoria Hall in Geneva, the Casino in Basel, the Beethoven Hall in Bonn. As a soloist, he worked with orchestras such as Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Orchestre National de Belgique, Radio-Philharmonie Hannover des NDR, Basler Sinfonie-Orchester and Orchester der Beethovenhalle Bonn under conductors like Fabio Luisi, Dennis Russell Davies, Eiji Oue or Marc Soustrot.

Born in Granollers, he studied at the Granollers Conservatory with Josep M. Roger, with Albert Attenelle at the Escola de Música de Barcelona and with Christopher Elton and Nelly Akopian at the Royal Academy of Music in London, where he graduated with the highest distinction (the DipRAM) in 1992. He is the live Catalan pianist with the most extensive discography. Among the more than sixty discs he has recorded, the six CDs with the complete works for piano by Frederic Mompou (Naxos) and the thirteen of the complete works by Joaquín Turina (Naxos) stand out. He has also recorded —mostly on Naxos amb Marco Polo labels— the complete piano works of Robert Gerhard, Xavier Montsalvatge, Déodat de Sévérac, Joaquim Homs, José Antonio Donostia, Ricard Lamote de Grignon and Joan Massià, as well as discs dedicated to Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Josep M. Ruera, Salvador Brotons, Josep Soler and Benet Casablancas.

“His performance brought a veritable roar of approval from the audience,” wrote the Irish Times, after Pavel Nersessian received the 1st Prize in the GPA Dublin International Piano Competition in 1991. Being one of the most remarkable pianists of his generation in Russia, he is known for his ability to play equally convincingly in the whole palette of the piano repertoire. He won prizes in the Beethoven Competition in Vienna in 1985, the Paloma O’Shea Competition in Santander, and the Tokyo Competition. Nersessian was a pupil of the famous Central Music School of the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatoire, where his teacher was Yu. Levin. Later he was a student of the Conservatoire under Prof. S. Dorensky. Upon graduating from the Conservatoire in 1987 with maximum marks he was invited to join the faculty.