Born in a small village in the Caucasian foothills, Anna Tsybuleva shot into the international spotlight in 2015 when she was crowned First Prize Winner of the Leeds International Piano Competition and honoured with critical acclaim such as “A pianist of rare gifts: not since Murray Perahia’s triumph in 1972 has Leeds had a winner of this musical poise and calibre” (International Piano Magazine). Initially, Anna had been taught the piano by her mother at the age of 6; with 13 she was admitted to study with Lyudmila Roschina at Moscow’s Central School of Music and later at the Tchaikovsky Conservatoire. Upon graduation with distinction she went for two years to Carlos Martinez-Mehner in Basle, before returning to Moscow to obtain a postgraduate degree.
Following a busy career as a recitalist, as well as a soloist with many orchestras, Anna Tsybuleva performs throughout the UK, the rest of Europe and Asia.
This year, she gives recital debuts in, amongst others, KKL Lucerne, Salle Cortot in Paris and in the Shanghai Oriental Arts Center. Apart from numerous concerts in Russia, Spain, China and Germany the absolute highlight of the current season is a recording of a new work for piano and orchestra with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Marin Alsop. Moreover, her second in a series of CDs with Chopin’s solo piano music will be released. Anna’s previous recordings were enthusiastically received by audiences and the media: her first solo CD with works by C. P. E. Bach, Beethoven, Schubert and Brahms, released in 2017, and the Second Brahms-Concerto with DSO Berlin and conductor Ruth Reinhardt in 2021.
Swiss conductor Stefan Blunier studied the piano, horn, composition and conducting in his Swiss hometown of Berne and at the Folkwang Hochschule in Essen, Germany. After first engagements at the local opera houses in Mainz, Augsburg and Mannheim, as well as with the Belgian National Orchestra, he became Music Director at the Darmstadt State Theatre. From 2008 to 2016 he served as Music Director at Opera Bonn, and simultaneously – from 2010 to 2013 – as principal guest conductor of the Belgian National Orchestra. Further engagements in the field of opera took him to Geneva, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Oslo and, as a regular guest conductor, Deutsche Oper Berlin. Apart from his work at opera houses, he has conducted concerts at numerous venues around the world, including Tokyo, Taiwan, Frankfurt, Porto, Leeds, Stuttgart, Bratislava, Budapest, Malmö, São Paulo and Belgium. In 2021 Stefan Blunier becomes chief conductor of the Orquestra Sinfónica do Porto Casa da Música, Portugal.
Gergely Madaras has been Music Director of Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège since 2019. He regularly appears as a guest conductor with orchestras including the BBC Symphony, BBC Philharmonic and BBC Scottish Symphony, Hallé, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Orchestre National de Lyon, Filarmonica della Scala, Orchestra Nazionale della RAI, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Hungarian National Philharmonic and Hungarian Radio orchestras, the Copenhagen, Oslo, Bergen and Luxembourg Philharmonic orchestras as well as with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Münchener Kammerorchester and Academy of Ancient Music. As an opera conductor he has appeared at the English National Opera, Dutch National Opera, Grand Théâtre de Genève and Hungarian State Opera. While his repertoire is rooted in the classical and romantic periods, he maintains a close relationship with new music. He collaborated with composers George Benjamin, Péter Eötvös, György Kurtág, Tristan Murail, Luca Francesconi, Philippe Boesmans and Pierre Boulez.
The Finnish pianist Antti Siirala has established himself as one of the finest pianists of his generation. His rich palette of sound colours, his differentiated and songful phrasing and expressive intelligence are praised frequently. Antti Siirala is the winner of numerous international competitions, including the Leeds International Piano Competition. In 1997 he won the International Beethoven Piano Competition Vienna as the youngest laureate in its history. This resulted in the performance of all Beethoven piano works at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki in the following years and a focus on Beethoven in Siirala’s repertoire.
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.
An active concert pianist, Pietro De Maria has played as soloist with the best known orchestras, with conductors of the stature of Roberto Abbado, Gary Bertini, Myung-Whun Chung, Vladimir Fedoseyev, Daniele Gatti, Alan Gilbert, Eliahu Inbal, Marek Janowski, Ton Koopman, Michele Mariotti, Ingo Metzmacher, Gianandrea Noseda, Corrado Rovaris, Kwamé Ryan, Yutaka Sado and Sándor Végh.
Coming from a rich tradition, pianist Andreas Haefliger won many plaudits for his Beethoven Perspectives recitals on disc and at major halls and festivals, and is also much sought-after as a chamber musician. Born into a distinguished Swiss musical family, he grew up in Germany, going on to study at the Juilliard School in New York. He was quickly recognised as a pianist of the first rank, and engagements with major US orchestras followed swiftly – the New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Pittsburgh, Chicago and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestras among them. In his native Europe he appeared with the great orchestras such as the Royal Concertgebouw, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Munich Philharmonic, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Deutsche Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Orchestre de Paris, London Symphony Orchestra and Vienna Symphony. Andreas Haefliger is well recognised as a superb recitalist, making his New York debut in 1988. He has ongoing regular relationships with the Lucerne and Edinburgh Festivals, Vienna Konzerthaus, and other major halls across North America and Asia. Moreover, he is a regular guest at London’s Wigmore Hall with his Perspectives series, in which he performs the complete piano works of Beethoven alongside works by other composers from Mozart to Ligeti. This series has formed the focus of his solo recital appearances and recordings in recent years, the latest CD being volume 7 of the corresponding series released by BIS. Since Coronavirus struck in March 2020, Andreas Haefliger resides in the Swiss mountains and has used this period of enforced reflection to work on Beethoven’s monumental Hammerklavier Sonata, culminating in an art movie of his performance in the Alpine surroundings. The film is being taken up by cinemas and TV stations and received its world premiere streaming at the Aspen Festival 2020. The world premiere recording of Dieter Ammann’s Gran Toccata with Susanna Mälkki and the Helsinki Philharmonic, coupled with concerti by Bartók and Ravel was released on BIS in October 2020. The first live performance of the Ammann was given at the BBC Proms 2019 with the BBC Symphony and Sakari Oramo, closely followed by the North American premiere with the Boston Symphony and Susanna Mälkki. It was co-commissioned for Andreas Haefliger by Boston together with the Vienna Konzerthaus, Munich Philharmonic, Lucerne Festival and Taipei Symphony.
Born in New York City to a musical family, Mr. Fiore received his earliest musical training from his father, a pianist and choral director, and his mother, a singer. His family moved to Seattle, where he studied piano, cello and other string instruments. Mr. Fiore began his professional musical activities at age 14 as a pianist and coach for the Seattle Opera’s annual production of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, a job which he continued for six summers. He later attended the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. In 1981, he joined the staff of the Santa Fé Opera, where he developed an affinity for the operas of Richard Strauss.
