Piano Festival – Part I (Saturday)

About the event

On this festival weekend the professional musician members of the Chopin Society give a benefit event, as they did in June 2021. Admission is free; donations are requested for the support of young talent.

A wide-ranging musical programme awaits, from the Baroque through Classicism and Romanticism to the modern era – with works for flute, cello, piano duo and piano trio, among others.

The weekend opens with a three-and-a-half-hour masterclass given by the renowned Italian pianist Giuliano Mazzoccante, who can be heard later in the afternoon in duo with the French cellist Romain Garioud.

GIULIANO MAZZOCCANTE was born in Chieti and studied at the “L. Cherubini” Conservatory in Florence and at the “Accademia Musicale Umbra”. He took part in Lazar Berman's international masterclasses in Klaipėda. He is a prize-winner of numerous competitions (including the “Prix Venice” 1998 and first prize at the “Arcangelo Speranza” Piano Competition in Taranto in 2002), with concerts in Milan, Rome, Trieste, Bologna, the Liszt House Weimar, the Prinzregententheater Munich, Istanbul, Utrecht, Oxford and Shanghai. Since 2010 he has taught chamber music at the International Summer Academy at Pommersfelden Castle. He is artistic director of the “Città di San Giovanni Teatino” competition and of the “Cenacolo della Musica – International School”.

ROMAIN GARIOUD belongs to France's brilliant young generation of cellists. He is a prize-winner of the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow (2002) and the Rostropovich Competition in Paris (2001) and plays a cello by Nicolai Gagliano (1760). He undertook advanced studies with Xavier Gagnepain and Philippe Muller and was nominated by ADAMI as a “discovery” for the Victoires de la Musique in 2002. He has appeared as a soloist under Christoph Eschenbach (Orchestre de Paris), Jean-Marc Burfin and Stéphane Cardon, and is a member and co-founder of the Delian::Quartett (debut in 2009 at the Vienna Musikverein and the Berlin Philharmonie). He teaches at the Akademie für Tonkunst Darmstadt.

Further participating artists: Henning Brandt, Ulrich Pietsch, Annabelle Kühnbaum, Sabine Simon (piano), Antje Reichert (violin), Friederike Eisenberg (cello), Mariana Röhmer-Litzmann and Mariko Windecker.

Biographies