“Shmukler is a volcano” and “the name of Ilya Shmukler must be remembered” is how the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung described this pianist after winning four major awards in addition to the first prize at the Concours Géza Anda 2024 in Zurich, Switzerland. When he was 3, his mother found Ilya jumping on his bed, singing Robertino Loreti’s “Jamaica” perfectly. But the parents wanted to raise their boy as a well-rounded person, so his early years were also spent with school, table tennis and ballroom dancing, before focusing on music. Since then, Ilya made solo appearances all over Europe and North America, while collaborating with such artists as Paavo Järvi, Gábor Takács-Nagy, Marin Alsop, Nicholas McGegan, Junichi Hirokami, Anne-Marie McDermott and Victor Julien-Laferrière. Concerto work includes the Tonhalle-Orchester Zurich, Musikkollegium Winterthur, Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra, Swiss Orchestra, the Lucerne Symphony, Fort Worth Symphony, Mariinsky, Sendai Philharmonic and Hiroshima Symphony Orchestras. To have become a finalist and the recipient of an award for the best performance of a Mozart Concerto at the Cliburn Competition is a milestone in his career, as is his New York debut as a winner of the Carnegie Weill Recital Hall Debut Audition in the same year 2022. Originally trained in Moscow, Ilya has been studying in Kansas/USA and in Madrid since 2019.

Daumants Liepiņš, mentioned by Pianist Magazine as “one of the pianists to look out for in 2020”, is one of the most sought-after Latvian pianists worldwide. After the release of his first solo album, “Zemzaris. Rachmaninov”, critics described him as “sensitive, imaginative, in full command of his instrument’s resources, effortlessly keeping listeners transfixed”. He is a laureate of numerous piano competitions, most notably the 1st Vendome Prize at the Verbier Festival, 1st Prize at the Maria Canals Piano Competition, as well as 2nd prizes at the George Enescu Competition and the 2024 Géza Anda Piano Competition, where the jury comprised Martha Argerich, Lucas Debargue, Rico Gulda, Toshio Hosokawa and Dénes Várjon, among others. Daumants’ concerto appearances took place with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Tonhalle-Orchestra Zurich, Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra, Orquesta Sinfónica de Madrid, Bilbao and Tenerife Symphony Orchestras, Latvian National Symphony Orchestra, Belgian National Symphony Orchestra, Flanders Symphony Orchestra, the Romanian and Georgian National Symphony Orchestras, among others. Recent chamber music partners include Julia Fischer, Amihai Grosz, Daniel Müller-Schott, Maximilian Hornung and Margarita Balanas.

Dmitry Yudin is a multiple prizewinner of the 16th Concours Géza Anda in Zurich, 2024, where he particularly impressed the audience and jury member Martha Argerich with a memorable rendering of Bartók’s Second Piano Concerto with the Tonhalle-Orchestra Zurich, conducted by Paavo Järvi. Born in Moscow in 2001, he was taught by Lydia Grigoryeva at the Gnessin School of Music from a very young age before moving to New York, where he studied with Horacio Gutierrez at the Manhattan School of Music from 2019 onwards. Since autumn 2025, he continues his training with Stanislav Ioudenitch at Park University, Kansas. At the MSM, he was awarded a full scholarship and won the MSM Eisenberg-Fried Concerto Competition with Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2. In 2023, Dmitry played a recital in Boston after winning the HMA Foote Award. Moreover, he has won the third prize at the New York Concert Artists Auditions, the second prize at the Wideman Concerto Competition in Van Cliburn’s hometown Shreveport, Louisiana, and the second and the audience prizes at the renowned Kissinger KlavierOlymp in Germany. His performance record includes concertos with orchestras such as the Baltic States Youth Symphony Orchestra, Baltic Music Academy Symphony Orchestra, St Petersburg State Academic Symphony Orchestra, Tomsk Academic Symphony Orchestra, the Bulgarian National Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra under Gábor Takács-Nagy.

Wataru Hisasue’s numerous accolades include a second prize at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels 2025; the third prize and a special prize for the best interpretation of the commissioned work by Pascal Dusapin at the 66th ARD International Music Competition; the Liszt-Bartók Prize and the G. Henle Verlag‘s Beethoven Prize at the 2024 Concours Géza Anda; all three prizes at the Kyoto Aoyama Music Foundation Awards. He performs extensively as a recitalist and soloist in Japan, Korea and all over Europe, working with prominent orchestras such as the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Belgian National Orchestra, the Brussels Philharmonic, Musikkollegium Winterthur, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra. Collaborations with renowned conductors include Michael Francis, Mikhail Pletnev, Marc Albrecht, and Kazushi Ono. Scholarships from the Heiwado Foundation, the Rohm Music Foundation, the Deutsche Orchester Foundation, and the Carl Bechstein Foundation have supported his work. Wataru’s musical education was shaped by Kuniko Murakami and Yasuko Tasumi in Japan, Gilead Mishory at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg, Emmanuel Strosser at the Conservatoire national de Paris, and Pascal Devoyon and Klaus Hellwig at the Universität der Künste Berlin. In October 2025 his latest album “Did it again”, featuring works by Pascal Dusapin, was released by GENUIN classics and the Bayerischer Rundfunk.

Laura Mota Pello is a Spanish pianist who studies at the Basle Music Academy with Claudio Martínez Mehner. She has won numerous first prizes at international competitions: the 8th Competition “Antón García Abril”, 15th Competition “Santa Cecilia”, 21st Competition “Ciutat de Carlet”, 5th Competition “María Herrero”, 6th “Ciudad de Cuenca” Competition. She was also a finalist at the Aarhus International Piano Competition 2017, and played in Spain (Teatro Jovellanos, Teatro Filarmónica, Oviedo and León Auditoriums, Shigeru Kawai Center), in Germany (Reinbek Castle at the invitation of the Chopin Society Hamburg, Summer Music Days Hitzacker), in Mexico City (XXII International Piano Festival “En blanco y negro”) and other countries. She performed at festivals such as the Clavicologne Piano Festival, the Tel-Hai International Piano Masterclasses, the Palazzo Ricci European Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Montepulciano and with orchestras such as the Oviedo Filarmonía and the Hamburg Camerata. Laura was given lessons by Elisabeth Leonskaja, Robert Levin, Patricia Kopatchinskaja and András Kemenes, among others. She is a winner of the first prize of the Swiss “Rahn Kulturfonds Music Prize” 2024 and as a result was invited to play with the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra at the KKL Lucerne. At the Concours Geza Anda 2024, she was awarded the Hortense Anda-Bursary and the Hungarian Special Prize Performance.

Pianist and composer Valentin Malinin was born in Nizhny Novgorod in 2001. He studied piano with Mira Marchenko at the Central Music School and with Kseniya Knorre at the Conservatory in Moscow. In addition, he took private piano lessons with Mikhail Pletnev, Boris Bloch, Kirill Gerstein, Stanislav Ioudenitch and Pavel Nersesyan. Valentin won second prize and the silver medal at the International Tchaikovsky Competition, and is also the winner of the 25th International Scriabin Competition (Italy), laureate of the International F. Busoni Piano Competition (Italy) and winner of the Hortense Anda-Bursary at the Concours Géza Anda 2024. Moreover, he participated in international music festivals such as the Rheingau Music Festival (Germany), the Rafael Orozco Piano Festival (Spain) and the Faces of Contemporary Piano Playing (Russia). Valentin Malinin is also a prize winner at international competitions for composers. In 2022, he released a CD on the Naxos label featuring music by Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Scriabin and Granados, as well as his own piano fantasy, “The Pearl Fishers“.