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Ethan Loch began piano lessons at age 4 with his mother. He now studies with Fali Pavri at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Diagnosed completely blind since birth, Ethan already explored the piano for hours as a toddler, imitating his first inspiration, Rowlf the piano-playing dog from The Muppet Show. His other inspiration was a DVD of Horowitz in Vienna, which he played relentlessly. Today, in his spare time, he can be found in his music room composing and improvising for hours and hours. After winning the keyboard category of the BBC Young Musician in 2022, he went on to the grand final, where he performed Chopin’s Second Piano Concerto with the BBC Birmingham Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Mark Wigglesworth.
Jonas Aumiller is winner of the 2021 Brahms Competition in Detmold and received the Silver Medal and Audience Prize at the Eighth Sendai International Music Competition in Japan in 2022. Born in Munich, Jonas began piano lessons at age seven. He graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Music degree from the Conservatorio F.A. Bonporti (Trento, Italy) where he studied with Massimiliano Mainolfi. Since 2018, he has worked with Sergei Babayan, first at the Juilliard School and later at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he is currently pursuing an Artist Diploma on full scholarship. A great admirer of the pianist traditions of the 19th and 20th century, Jonas transcribes orchestra and organ works for piano and performs them regularly in his recitals.
Carrie-Ann Matheson has a multi-faceted international career as pianist, conductor and educator, and since January 2021, is the Artistic Director of the San Francisco Opera Center. A native of Canada, Ms.Matheson began her career at the Metropolitan Opera, where she was a tenured member of the music staff, serving as assistant conductor, prompter, pianist and vocal coach. The expansion of her European performing career began in 2014 when she was invited by Maestro Fabio Luisi to join the coaching and conducting staff at Opernhaus Zürich.
Especially in demand as a recital pianist, she has performed with many of the world’s most celebrated opera singers, including Rolando Villazón, Benjamin Bernheim, Jonas Kaufmann, Piotr Beczała, Diana Damrau, Thomas Hampson and Joyce DiDonato.
Ms. Matheson made her conducting debut at Opernhaus Zürich, where she has since conducted works such as La Finta Giardiniera, Don Pasquale and Iphigénie en Tauride. As assistant conductor, she has worked with luminaries including James Levine, Fabio Luisi, Yannick Nezet-Seguin, and Gianandrea Noseda, and has been engaged in that capacity by such renowned festivals as the Salzburger Festspiele and the Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festival.
Passionate about nurturing the next generation of opera singers and pianists, Ms. Matheson has worked with the world’s leading young artist programs, including the International Opera Studio (Opernhaus Zürich), Atkins Young Artist Program (The Mariinsky Theatre), Lindemann Young Artist Development Program (The Metropolitan Opera), Ryan Opera Center (Lyric Opera of Chicago), Music Academy of the West, Aspen Music Festival and the International Vocal Arts Institute.
Ms. Matheson holds degrees from the University of Prince Edward Island (B.Mus.Ed), the Cleveland Institute of Music (M.Mus in Collaborative Piano), the Manhattan School of Music (Professional Studies Diploma in Vocal Accompanying) and is a graduate of the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program.
Alexandra Dovgan was born in 2007 into a family of musicians and began her piano studies when she was four and a half years of age. At age five, her talent emerged when she passed the highly competitive selections to join the Academic Central Music School of Moscow State Conservatory, where she studied under renowned teacher Mira Marchenko.
Alexandra is a prize winner at five international competitions, among them Moscow International Vladimir Krainev Piano Competition, International Young Pianists Competition “Astana Piano Passion”, International Television contest for young musicians “The Nutcracker”. Alexandra was only ten when she won the Grand Prix at the II International “Grand Piano Competition”. The recordings of this event have travelled the world on Medici.tv and YouTube, moving musicians and piano lovers all around the globe.
Despite her young age, Alexandra has already made her debut in the most prestigious concert halls as the Berlin Philharmonie, Theatre des Champs-Elysees in Paris, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Vienna Konzerthaus, Victoria Hall in Geneve, Konzerthuset in Stockholm, receiving a standing ovation and enthusiastic reviews by the press.
In July 2019, she impressed critics and the public with a highly acclaimed recital at Salzburg Festival.
Despite the pandemic, Alexandra Dovgan performed a series of impressive European concerts in the past couple of years. She returned to Salzburg to play with the Mozarteum Orchestra and Trevor Pinnock; she performed with Stockholm Philharmonic and Ton Koopman, with Barcelona Symphony and Kazushi Ono, with Slovenska Filharmonija and Philipp von Steinaecker.
In June 2021, she made her debut with Gustavo Dudamel and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra.
Among Alexandra’s major engagements in 2022-23, there are recitals at Vienna Konzerthaus, Berlin Boulez Saal, Munich Prinzregententheater, Paris Théâtre des Champs Elysées, Zurich Tonhalle, Lisbon Gulbenkian, Stuttgart Liederhalle, and in Turin, Milan, Basel, Belgrade, Nantes and Florence.
In the summer of 2022, she performed at some of Europe’s most prestigious festivals, including the Klavier Festival Ruhr, La Roque d’Antheron, the Rheingau Musik Festival, the Gstaad Menuhin Festival, and the Granada and Malaga festivals. In September 2022, she made her double debut in Japan: playing with the Kioi Sinfonietta and Trevor Pinnock for the season’s opening concert and, a few days later, a solo recital in the same hall. Other appearances in Osaka, Nagoya and Kawasaki completed the tour.
In April 2023, she made her debut with the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich under Paavo Jarvi, and last summer at the Verbier Festival.
Spontaneous depth and consciousness, along with a sound of incredible beauty and precision, are the distinguishing characteristics of Alexandra’s pianism. You will not find any element of showing off or technical demonstration in her piano playing but an impressive concentration combined with purity of expression and creative imagination. She possesses a charismatic presence on stage and a distinct personality.
Away from the piano, Alexandra loves skiing, playing the organ, learning ballet and mathematics and spending time with her little brother.
Born to Polish parents what is today Lyvov, Ukrain, Emanuel Ax moved to Winnipeg, Canada, with his family when he was a young boy. Mr. Ax made his New York debut in the Young Concert Artists Series, and in 1974 won the first Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Tel Aviv. In 1975 he won the Michaels Award of Young Concert Artists, followed four years later by the Avery Fisher Prize.
In fall 2021 he resumed a post-COVID touring schedule that included concerts with the Colorado, Pacific, Cincinnati and Houston symphonies as well as Minnesota, Los Angeles, New York Philadelphia and Cleveland orchestras. 2022/23 will include a tour with Itzhak Perlman “and Friends” and a continuation of the “Beethoven For 3” touring and recording project with partners Leonidas Kavakos and Yo-Yo Ma, this year on the west coast.
In recital he can be heard in Palm Beach, Los Angeles, St. Louis, Chicago, Washington DC, Houston, Las Vegas and New York and with orchestras in Atlanta, Detroit, Boston, San Francisco, San Diego, New York, Naples, Portland OR, Toronto, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Cleveland. Touring in Europe in the fall and spring includes concerts in Germany, UK, Switzerland and France.
Mr. Ax has been a Sony Classical exclusive recording artist since 1987 and following the success of the Brahms Trios with Kavakos and Ma, the trio launched an ambitious, multi-year project to record all the Beethoven Trios and Symphonies arranged for trio of which the first two discs have recently been released. He has received GRAMMY® Awards for the second and third volumes of his cycle of Haydn’s piano sonatas. He has also made a series of Grammy-winning recordings with cellist Yo-Yo Ma of the Beethoven and Brahms sonatas for cello and piano. In the 2004/05 season Mr. Ax contributed to an International EMMY® Award-Winning BBC documentary commemorating the Holocaust that aired on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. In 2013, Mr. Ax’s recording Variations received the Echo Klassik Award for Solo Recording of the Year (19th Century Music/Piano).
Mr. Ax is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and holds honorary doctorates of music from Skidmore College, New England Conservatory of Music, Yale University, and Columbia University. For more information about Mr. Ax’s career, please visit www.EmanuelAx.com.
Rena Shereshevskaya is a graduate of the Moscow Tchaikovsky State Conservatory and a postgraduate of this institution, a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France), a laureate of the Ippolitov-Ivanov International Prize in Musical Education and an Honorary Professor of the Moscow Ippolitov-lvanov Musical and Pedagogical Institute. She taught at the Central Special Music School for Gifted Children at the Moscow Tchaikovsky State Conservatory for 12 years before joining the Ippolitov-lvanov Music Institute as a professor of piano and head of a piano chair. In 1993 she was first invited as a guest professor to France, where she has been working ever since. At present she is a professor of piano at the Paris Alfred Cortot Superior Music School and at the Rueil-Malmaison Conservatory. She gives masterclasses all over the world (France, USA, Canada, Italy, Switzerland, Russia, Monaco, China, amongst others) and serves as a member or head of jury at international piano competitions. Many of her students became prize-winners of major competitions, for example Rémi Geniet (2nd Prize at the Queen Elisabeth Competition, Brussels, 2013), Lucas Debargue (4th Prize and the Special Prize of the Association of Music Critics at the 15th Tchaikovsky Competition, Moscow, 2015), Alexandre Kantorow (1st Prize and the Grand Prix at the 16th Tchaikovsky Competition, Moscow, 2019). At the same time, Rena Shereshevskaya continues to play chamber music with internationally renowned musicians and in duo with her daughter Victoria, a mezzo-soprano. Moreover, she is the artistic director of a festival she conceived, Artistic Dynasties and Families.
One of Ireland’s most successful musicians, Finghin Collins was born in Dublin in 1977 and, following initial lessons with his sister Mary, studied piano at the Royal Irish Academy of Music with John O’Conor and at the Geneva Conservatoire with Dominique Merlet. Winner of the RTÉ Musician of the Future Competition in 1994 and the Classical Category at the National Entertainment Awards in Ireland in 1998, he went on to take first prize at the Clara Haskil Competition in Switzerland in 1999. Since then he has continued to enjoy a flourishing international career that takes him all over Europe and the United States, as well to the Far East and Australia.
Collins has performed with such orchestras as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Houston Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Gulbenkian Orchestra, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, garnering consistent praise from critics and public alike. Conductors with whom he has collaborated include Frans Brüggen, Myung-Whun Chung, Christoph Eschenbach, Hans Graf, Emmanuel Krivine, Nicholas McGegan, Gianandrea Noseda, Sakari Oramo, Tadaaki Otaka, Heinrich Schiff, Vassily Sinaisky, Leonard Slatkin and Gábor Tákacs-Nagy. He has also given solo recitals in many of the world’s most prestigious halls and participates frequently in chamber music festivals with a variety of colleagues of international standing.
Since live concerts recommenced during the summer of 2021, Collins has continued t to perform a wide range of solo and concerto repertoire as well as chamber music in Ireland, the UK, France, Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands. These include performances at the Wigmore Hall, London, Zermatt Festival in Switzerland, Piano aux Jacobins in France and the world premiere of a new concerto by Jane O’Leary with the National Symphony Orchestra in Galway and Dublin.
Over the past two decades Collins has developed a close relationship with Claves Records in Switzerland, recording two double CDs of Schumann’s piano music (which won numerous awards including Gramophone’s Editor’s Choice in 2006), followed by a recording of works for piano and orchestra by Charles V. Stanford with the RTÉ NSO / Kenneth Montgomery (Editor’s Choice, May 2011). In May 2013 RTÉ lyric fm launched his recording of four Mozart piano concertos directed from the keyboard with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra. A Chopin recital CD was released in 2017, a co-production between RTÉ lyric fm and Claves Records, while in spring 2020 Claves released a recording of the Mozart Piano Quartets with Rosanne Philippens (violin), Máté Szücs (viola) and István Várdai (cello).
Finghin Collins makes a significant contribution to the musical landscape of his native Ireland, where he resides. Since 2013, he has been Artistic Director of Music for Galway, which among many other projects was tasked with presenting the major classical programme of Galway 2020, European Capital of Culture. The centrepiece of that programme, the cello festival CELLISSIMO, was delivered successfully online in March 2021. He is also the founding Artistic Director, since 2006, of the New Ross Piano Festival in Wexford as well as the founding co-Artistic Director, since 2019, of the International Master Course at the National Concert Hall in Dublin.
Collins was a member of the jury of the Clara Haskil Competition in Switzerland in 2021 and the Dublin International Piano Competition in 2022. He will chair the jury of the Clara Haskil Competition in 2023 and 2025.
In 2017, the National University of Ireland conferred on him an honorary Degree of Doctor of Music.
Mari Kodama is known for her natural musicality, tonal expressiveness, and as a benchmark Beethoven interpreter. She is one of the few female pianists to record the composer’s complete sonatas. Kodama was born in Osaka and raised in Germany and Paris. At the Conservatoire National in Paris, she studied piano with Germaine Mounier and chamber music with Geneviève Joy-Dutilleux. She also studied with Tatiana Nikolaeva and Alfred Brendel. Since her New York recital debut at Carnegie Hall in 1995, she has performed with renowned orchestras and conductors in the world’s leading concert halls. Kodama co-founded the Forest Hill Musical Days festival, a chamber music festival in San Francisco, with her husband Kent Nagano, and she has also led the chamber music series at the Orford Music Festival. In 2018 she assumed artistic directorship at the festival Tra Luce e Sogno in Postignano, Italy.
Yunchan Lim launched onto the international music stage when he was 14. He won Second Prize and the Chopin Special Award in his first-ever competition, the Cleveland International Piano Competition for Young Artists in 2018. The following year, at age 15, he was the youngest to win Korea’s IsangYun International Competition, where he also took home two special prizes. 2022 has brought more accolades; just weeks ago, Yunchan was named Gold Medalist at the 2022 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition (USA). He has performed across South Korea—including with the Korean Orchestra Festival, Korea Symphony, Suwon Philharmonic, and Busan Philharmonic Orchestras, among others—as well as in Madrid, at the invitation of the Korea Cultural Center in Spain. Yunchan currently studies at the Korea National University of Arts with Minsoo Sohn.
Justus Friedrich Eichhorn studies with Grigory Gruzman at the Liszt School of Music in Weimar, where he also studies composition and conducting. In 2020, Justus was a pupil of Matti Raekallio at The Juilliard School during his family’s stay abroad for several months. He made his debut at age ten with Haydn’s Concerto in D. Since then, he has given concerts with several orchestras, including Mozart’s Concerto in A K. 414 with the Moscow Soloists, conducted by Yuri Bashmet. Justus has won numerous piano competitions, including First Prize in the Bechstein Competition Berlin. In 2021 he performed at the Elba Festival and was awarded the festival’s Promotional Prize. In 2022 he received the Swiss Charity Award at Tonhalle Zürich and performed Beethoven’s Second Concerto. In 2023 he makes his debut with the Korean Chamber Orchestra at the Seoul Arts Center and later performs Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto in Germany.