Artistic Director prof. Alessandra Schettino

predsednik žirije / presidente giuria / president of the jury

Vincenzo Balzani graduated under Alberto Mozzati Magna cum Laude from G. Verdi Conservatory of music Milano. 1965 he won the Ricordi International. 1967 he got Liszt prize at Maria Canals in Barcelona. 1971 he was top prize winner in many famous competitions as Pozzoli, Treviso, G. B. Viotti Internationals. 1975 he successfully represented RAI television at Ravel Competition in Paris. He has performed 1200 concerts (recitals, chamber and symphonics) all over the world including the most prestigious Italian theatres and festivals (Scala, San Carlo, Regio-Turin, Olimpico-Rome,Festival Michelangeli,Festival dei Due Mondi, Settembre Musica). He is recording on Radio and TV and has recorded several LPs and CDs including Scarlatti, Mozart, Hummel, Beethoven, Chopin, Rossini , Schubert-Liszt. Since 1973 he became piano professor in the Conservatory of Piacenza and since 1996 in the Conservatory of Milan. He is jury member of many international competitions (G.B. Viotti, Pozzoli, London, Madrid, Tchaikovsky junior, Takamatsu, Lion, Hummel, Shenzhen) and holds courses, masterclasses lectures in Italy and abroad. He is artistic director of “Città di Cantù”, “Valsesia Musica”, “Pianotalents”, “Pozzolino”, “Monterosa Kawai”, “Tadini International” and “Champion’s Keyboard Piano Competition Online”. Since 2010 he has been artistic consultant of the prestigious “Pozzoli” competition in Seregno and from 2012 to 2020 of Pozzolino. In 2009 in Milano he has founded the Pianofriends association organizing festivals, concerts, stages. He is president of PianoIn association. Since January 2018 he has been regularly invited to hold concerts, seminars and masterclasses in the most important halls of the People’s Republic of China and in Hong Kong as testimonial of the “Yangtze River Grand Piano”. He collaborates with “Parsons Limited” of Hong Kong on an important educational-musical project for the childhood.

Luca Trabucco was born in Salerno in 1970; he started his musical studies in Genoa under the guidance of Claudio Proietti in piano and Adelchi Amisano in composition. Subsequently he specialized in piano performance at the “Incontri col Maestro” Imola Piano Academy with Lazar Berman, Alexander Lonquich, Boris Petrushanski, Riccardo Risaliti and Piero Rattalino. Winner of many international piano competitions (Venice, Treviso, Viotti-Valsesia, New Orleans and others), he performed all over the Europe, United States, Middle and Far East; Luca realized many recordings and CDs, including works especially composed for him. Through the years he focused on the XX century French repertoire and he played the whole works by Debussy and Ravel, authors of whom he’s considered a specialist. He’s oftentimes invited to hold masterclasses and to sit in the juries at international piano competitions. The municipality of Marineo in Sicily, place of early origins of his family, has awarded him with the City Keys for his artistic career in 2020.

Hailed by the Washington Post as a « young artist displaying maturity and elegance », French pianist Olivier Moulin studied under Eric Heidsieck and Gery Moutier at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique of Lyon, where he was unanimously awarded first prize with honors. After advanced studies in the same institution, he continued his training in Austria at the Salzburg Mozarteum in the classes of Karl-Heinz Kämmerling and Clemens Hagen, where he obtained a Master of Arts with highest honors. Throughout his studies, he has also benefited from the advices of masters such as Aldo Ciccolini, Yvonne Loriod-Messiaen, Jacques Rouvier, Jean-François Heisser, Sergio Perticaroli…
Prizewinner of international piano competitions, he has been invited to participate in major international festivals : la Roque d’Anthéron, Montpellier and Radio-France, Lille Clef de Soleil, Pianos Folies in Le Touquet, Journées Lyriques in Chartres, Divonne, Sully-sur-Loire, La Vézère, Croisements Festival in China, Virtuosi Festival in Brazil, Festival Internacional de Piano En Blanco y Negro in Mexico, Istanbul’s Lisztomanias, Motley Tulip International Arts Festival in Belarus, Bellapais International Festival in Cyprus…
He has performed in prestigious venues in France (Grand Auditorium of Radio-France, Salle Gaveau, Salle Cortot, the Louvre Auditorium, Lyon and Avignon Operas, Cloître des Jacobins in Toulouse, Théâtre des Variétés in Monaco, Arsenal de Metz…), in Europe (Germany, Austria, Belgium, Belarus, Hungary, Spain, Norway, Portugal, Slovakia, Switzerland, Turkey…), Asia (Japan, China, South Korea, India, Indonesia…), and the Americas (USA, Brazil, Mexico). His concerts are regularly broadcasted by radio and television in France and abroad. Olivier made in 2014 U.S. debut at the French Embassy in Washington DC, where he played a recital devoted to Rameau, Debussy, Ravel.
He has also collaborated with several orchestras : Orchestre National de Metz, Ensemble Orchestral de Montbéliard, the Philharmonic Orchestra of Wuhan (China), the Camerata de Coahuila (Mexico)… His passion for chamber music has allowed him to share the stage with many artists such as David Guerrier, the Fine Arts Quartet, soloists of the Philharmonic of Radio-France, Bertrand Chamayou, Jérôme Dorival… He was also invited to Geneva and Chartres by Eve Ruggieri to take part in conference/concerts focusing on the life of Frederic Chopin. His first solo CD, devoted to Franz Liszt, was released in october 2011 for the french label AmeSon/Outhere.
Olivier Moulin is Professor of piano at the Nancy Conservatory (France), and President of the Epinal International Piano Competition. He regularly gives masterclasses in Europe, USA, Mexico, Japan, China … and is invited to serve as a member of the jury of many international piano competitions such as : Istanbul, Porto Santa Cecilia, Scriabin in Grosseto, Sviatoslav Richter International Piano Competition…

Pianist, chamber musician, teacher, Habilitated Doctor of Musical Arts, associate professor at the Chair of Piano of the Chopin University of Music, from which she graduated with honours in 2004 in the piano class of Alicja Paleta-Bugaj and in the chamber music class of Krystyna Borucińska. Since 2020, she has been a Deputy Dean of the Department of Instrumental Studies of her alma mater.
Prizewinner of national and international piano competitions, including the 1st prize in the All-Polish Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw (2000). She received an honourable mention in the Estrada Młodych as part of the 35th Polish Piano Festival in Słupsk (2001); finalist of the International Piano Competition ‘Sergei Rachmaninov’ in Morcone (2003); winner of the second prize in the 3rd Concorso Pianistico Internazionale ‘Andrea Baldi’ in Bologna (2013). Two-time scholarship holder of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage as well as recipient of other prestigious scholarships.
She has participated in numerous master classes led by such artists and teachers as Andrzej Jasiński, Marek Mizera, Jerzy Godziszewski, Oxana Yablonskaya, Jacques Rouvier, Sergio Perticaroli, Hiroko Nakamura, Karl-Heinz Kämmerling, Arie Vardi, Dominique Merlet, Alexei Nasedkin, Evgeny Mogilevsky, Vera Gornostaeva, Lee Kum-Sing, and Nikolai Demidenko. The artist has performed in many Polish cities (including seven philharmonic halls) as well as in renowned concert venues in Austria, Azerbaijan, China, the Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, or the USA. She has co-operated with such conductors as Łukasz Borowicz, Rafał Janiak, Monika Wolińska, Sławek A. Wróblewski, Tadaaki Otaka, Daisuke Soga and Jiří Petrdlík. She has run master classes for pianists in Poland, Azerbaijan, China, Italy, Tunisia, and the USA.
In 2014, together with Konstanty Andrzej Kulka and Tomasz Strahl, she recorded complete chamber works by Fryderyk Chopin for the DUX label. The album won the Excepcional award of the Spanish magazine Scherzo and received a nomination for a Fryderyk. In addition, the artist participated in the recording of two CDs under the Saxophone varie series (vol. 2 and vol. 3, nominated for a Fryderyk) with saxophonist Paweł Gusnar; in 2018, on the occasion of the centenary of Poland’s independence, she recorded cello sonatas by Zygmunt Stojowski and Ludomir Różycki, together with Tomasz Strahl, for Chopin University Press. In 2019, the album won a Fryderyk in the category Album of the Year – Chamber Music.
Moreover, in 2014 Agnieszka Przemyk-Bryła published the book Sonata w twórczości Siergieja Rachmaninowa [Sonata in the Output of Sergei Rachmaninov] (Toruń 2014).

Bulgarian-born pianist Mirella Petrova began her musical education at the age of five at the “Professor Veselyn Stoyanov” music school in her native city of Russe. She gave her concert debut two years later with the Russe Philharmonic in a performance of Haydn’s Piano Concerto in C Major. In 1992, Ms. Petrova moved to Dresden, where she took up her studies with Professor Detlef Kaiser at the ‘Carl Maria von Weber’ College of Music. After successfully passing exams as pianist and educator, she completed a postgraduate course in piano ‘with distinction’, and a postgraduate course in chamber music with both Professor Kaiser and Peter Bruns. She developed as an artist through international master classes with Mikhail Wosskressenski, Klaus Hellwig, Karl-Heinz Kammerling, Detlef Kraus, Peter Rosel, Elza Kolodin, Christian Zacharias, Jacques Rouvier and Lazar Berman. She also expanded her knowledge of song composition by working with Olaf Bär, Gertrud Geissler and Semyon Skigin. Mirella Petrova has received many prizes in national and international competitions, such as the Usti nad Labem competition in the Czech Republic, the Maria Canals in Barcelona, Spain, and Konzerteum in Markopoulo, Greece. She was honored with the 1999-2000 DAAD Prize and received the Carl Maria von Weber scholarship award for music from the Art and Culture Foundation. Ms. Petrova has performed at festivals such as The Riga Music Festival in Latvia, the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival and Ruhr Piano Festival in Germany, and the Apollonia Festival of Arts, Varna Summer, and March Music Days festivals in Bulgaria. Her career has been documented through numerous radio and television recordings. Ms. Petrova has made guest appearances as a soloist under conductors such as Jörg-Peter Weigle, Naoshi Takahashi, Ivan Wulpe, and Aleksej Izmirliev. In addition to her solo concerts, Ms. Petrova has dedicated herself intensively to chamber music in a variety of areas, including piano duo, song duo, and chamber music with string instruments. She has undertaken concert tours in Greece, Poland, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Spain, Japan and Turkey. In 2014, Ms. Petrova released a CD called “A Wagner evening in Graupa” as a soloist with the Elbland Philharmonic Orchestra in Saxony. In that same year, she played the Beethoven Triple Concerto along with Sayako Kusaka, violin, and Peter Bruns, cello. In the spring of 2015, this trio played again the Triple Concerto with the Presidential Symphony Orchestra in Ankara, Turkey. In addition to her extensive concert performances, Mirella Petrova has taught piano and chamber music at the ‘Carl Maria von Weber’ College of Music since 1997.