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Members
(in alphabetical order):
* Local
members of the Jury - Preselection Committee in charge of processing
all applications.
The
Chairman and the Executive Secretary of the Chopin Society of Hong
Kong will attend all sessions of the Jury as observers and non-voting
members. |
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The Chairman of the Jury:
VLADIMIR ASHKENAZY
 One of the leading musicians in the world, with a career which has encompassed a wide variety of musical performances and forms of expression, maestro Ashkenazy is uniquely qualified to chair a group of his peers to judge this competition. He himself in the early stages of his career won the first prizes at the Queen Elizabeth Competition in Brussels in 1956 and at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1962.
Conducting has formed the largest part of his activities for the past 20 years. He took up the new position of Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor to the Sydney Symphony in January 2009 and collaborates with them on extensive recording projects and international touring activities each year. He has previously held posts as Chief Conductor of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and Music Director of NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo.
Alongside these positions, Ashkenazy continues his longstanding relationship with the Philharmonia Orchestra of which he was appointed Conductor Laureate in 2000. In addition to his performances with the orchestra in London and around the UK each season, he tours with them worldwide. Ashkenazy also holds the position of Music Director of the European Union Youth Orchestra, with whom he tours each year, and Conductor Laureate of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra and the NHK Symphony Orchestra. He maintains strong links with a number of other major orchestras with whom he has built special relationships over the years, including The Cleveland Orchestra (of whom he was formerly Principal Guest Conductor) and Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin (Chief Conductor and Music Director 1988-96), as well as making guest appearances with many other major orchestras around the world.
While conducting takes up a significant portion of his time each season, Ashkenazy maintains his devotion to the piano, these days mostly in the recording studio. His discography is enormous and covers among others, the complete piano and piano and violin sonatas of Beethoven, the complete piano works of Chopin, the complete solo piano works of Schumann, the complete Mozart and Rachmaninov piano concertos - to mention but a few. His most recent CDs include Shostakovich Preludes and Fugues, Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier and duo recordings with his pianist and clarinetist sons.
The Members of the Jury (in alphabetical order)
TIGRAN ALIKHANOV
 Tigran Alikhanov received his initial musical education at the piano department of the Specialized Central School of Music and then studied at Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory with professor Lev Oborin (1961-1969). He became an associate professor at the conservatory and since 1992 has been professor and the Head of the chamber ensemble and string quartet department. He also held the Rectorship of the conservatory during 2005-2009.
His performing career since 1966 included appearances in both solo recitals and performances with orchestras in Moscow, St. Petersburg and other cities of Russia as well as abroad in Austria, Hungary, Greece, Italy, Spain, The Netherlands, USA, Canada, China, and South Korea, among others. His repertoire is extensive, including solo piano and chamber works of different epochs — from J. S. Bach to contemporary composers such as Igor Stravinsky, John Cage, George Crumb, Edison Denisov, Alfred Schnittke, etc. His discography includes CDs and LPs covering works by J. S. Bach, Liszt, and the first Russian release of the piano sonata by Berg.
Professor Alikhanov is actively engaged in giving master classes not only in Russia but also in universities in the US and in Spain. Several of his students have won prizes in major competitions - he himself being a laureate of the 1967 M. Long and J. Thibaud International competition in Paris.
He was named People’s Artist of Russia in 2002.
PETER FRANKL
 Peter Frankl studied at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest under Hernadi, Kodaly and Weiner and won first prizes in several international competitions. He now teaches at the Yale University School of Music.
He has a long-standing international career which has taken him to more than fifty countries as a recitalist, chamber musician and in concertos performed under the baton of the world’s great conductors among whom, to name but a few, Abbado, Ashkenazy, Haitink, Boulez, Solti, Chailly, Masur, Dohnanyi, Maazel, Fruhbeck de Burgos and Tilson-Thomas. He has performed with the most renowned orchestras of Europe and North America such as the Cleveland, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Cincinnati and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestras, as well as the Berlin Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, Concertgebouw Orchestra, Leipzig Gewandhaus, the Israel Philharmonic, all the major British orchestras and prominent orchestras in Australia and Asia.
As a chamber musician, he has worked with artists such as Ralph Kirshbaum, Andras Schiff, Kyung Wha Chung, Tamas Vasary and important string quartets, including the Amadeus, Bartok, Tokyo, Guarnieri, Lindsay, Borodin, Fine Arts, American and the Vermeer. He is a regular performer at Festivals throughout the world including the Edinburgh, Cheltenham and Aldeburgh festivals in the United Kingdom and guest artist at the summer festivals such as Verbier, Aspen, and Marlboro among others.
Peter Frankl has an extensive catalogue of recordings ranging from the complete works for piano of Schumann and Debussy to chamber music and concerti. Recent recordings include a solo Bartok album, Brahms and Schumann Piano Quintets with the Lindsay String Quartet, a solo Chopin album, Brahms violin and piano sonatas with Kyung Wha Chung, Brahms Piano Concerti, Bartok Rhapsodies with Peter Csaba, Mozart Piano Concerti ‘a quattro’ and the complete Mozart piano duets with Tamas Vasary.
In honor of his 70th Birthday in October 2005 he was awarded the Middle Cross of the Hungarian Republic for his outstanding performances throughout the world.
GARY GRAFFMAN
 The president of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia until 2006, and successor to previous heads such as Josef Hofmann and Rudolf Serkin, Gary Graffman brings to the Jury his own decades-long artistic experience as a pianist and teacher.
At the age of seven the Curtis Institute accepted him to study with the renowned Isabelle Vengerova. After graduation from Curtis, he worked intensively for several years with Vladimir Horowitz and, during the summers, at the Marlboro Music Festival with Rudolf Serkin.
Before an injury to his right hand in 1979 curtailed his performing career to the small but brilliant repertoire for the left hand, he had left an extensive discography covering solo as well as piano concerto pieces with the orchestras of New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Chicago and Boston, and with such conductors as Leonard Bernstein, Zubin Mehta and Eugene Ormandy.
Gary Graffman continues to perform and record piano works specifically composed for the left hand for him including piano concertos by, among others, Ned Rorem, Daron Hagen and Stanislaw Skrowaczewski.
In the summer of 2005, Gary Graffman received an invitation to head the piano department at the new Canton International Summer Music Academy in Guandong, China, giving him an opportunity to explore his love of education, chamber music, and Chinese culture.
THORUNN JOHANNSDOTTIR-ASHKENAZY
 Thorunn Johannsdottir-Ashkenazy emerged as a child prodigy at the age of 3 when she gave her first public performance with her father on the piano.
A graduate of the Royal Academy of Music, she studied with Professor Harold Craxton from the age of 11 to 18 before going on to study at the Moscow Conservatory in 1960 with Professor Lev Oborin (studying alongside Vladimir Ashkenazy).
As a professional pianist, during which time she performed under the name Thorunn Tryggvason, she appeared with the London Symphony Orchestra and with the Hallé Orchestra under Sir John Barbirolli.
Following her marriage to Vladimir Ashkenazy in Russia in 1961, Thorunn decided to abandon her professional career due to the demands of family life. Having raised five children and traveled the world with her husband, she leads a very active life and continues to be an enormous support to her husband as a highly perceptive and talented musician.
Thorunn brings to the Competition her own expertise as a pianist and, most importantly, nearly half a century of superb, possibly unique, musical experience.
GABRIEL KWOK
 Gabriel Kwok was born in Hong Kong and studied at the Royal Academy of Music with Guy Jonson and later with Louis Kentner in London. He has been Head of Keyboard Studies at The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts since 1989.
A Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music in London, he is Visiting Professor at various conservatories including the Shenzhen Arts School, Xian Conservatory of Music and the Wuhan Conservatory of Music. He has also served, among others, on the faculty of the Cliburn Piano Institute (USA), International Institute for Young Musicians (USA), Colburn Academy Festival (USA), Beijing International Music Festival and Academy, Shanghai International Piano Festival and the Tel-Hai International Piano Master Classes (Israel).
He has given master classes in China, UK, USA, Canada, Germany, Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, Korea, Taiwan and Singapore.
Gabriel Kwok has been a jury member of many international competitions including the Asia Mozart Bicentenary, Vianna da Motta, Gina Bachauer, Darmstadt Chopin, Rio de Janeiro BNDES and the Singapore Chopin International Piano competitions.
He has collaborated with many distinguished artists in concerts, including Jean-Pierre Rampal, Aaron Rosand, Leon Spierer, Richard Stolzman and Wang Jian. He has also been an Artist-in-Residence for Radio Television Hong Kong.
LI MING-QIANG
 Born in Shanghai, he received his first piano lessons from Alfred Wittenberg, a student of the famous violinist J. Joachim, and then studied with Tatiana Petrovna Kravchenko of the St. Petersburg Conservatory of Music. He won the first prize of the First George Enescu International Piano Competition in Romania in 1958 and the fourth prize of the sixth International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw. He was the Vice-President of the Shanghai Conservatory (1984-89) and Professor of Piano since 1983.
Earlier in his career he concertized extensively throughout Asia, Europe, North America and Oceania.
Li Ming-qiang is a highly regarded jury member of many major International Piano Competitions including the Beijing International Piano Competition, the Chopin International Piano Competition in Warsaw, the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in the USA, the George Enescu International Piano Competition in Bucharest, the Hamamatsu International Piano Competition in Japan, the Dinu Lipatti International Piano Competition in Bucharest, the Montreal International Music Competition, the Prokofiev International Piano Competition in St. Petersburg, the Rubinstein International Master Piano Competition in Tel-Aviv, the Santander International Piano Competition in Spain, the Sydney International Piano Competition and the Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition in Moscow.
Since 1989 he has been lecturing and giving master classes at many leading Universities, Conservatories and Schools of Music in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and the USA. He has made recordings for the China Records, Electrecord of Romania, Supraphon of the Czech Republic and Alpha Omega Sound, the label of the Chopin Society of Hong Kong. He is a life-member of the American Liszt Society and Honorary member of Trinity College of Music, London.
GARRICK OHLSSON
 Garrick Ohlsson began his piano studies at the age of 8 with Thomas Tom Lishman at the Westchester Conservatory of Music in New York and then at The Juilliard School as a student of Sascha Gorodnitzki and of Rosina Lhévinne. His musical development has been influenced in completely different ways by this succession of distinguished teachers, among whom was also Claudio Arrau. He won first prizes at the 1966 Busoni and 1968 Montréal Piano Competitions and in 1970, the first American to do so, at the prestigious Chopin Competition in Warsaw.
Thereafter, Garrick Ohlsson pursued a distinguished global career, gaining worldwide recognition as one of the
finest pianists of his generation and commanding an enormous repertoire, which ranges over the entire piano
literature including some 80 piano concertos.
He has appeared with a very large number of orchestras including the Cleveland, Chicago, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, and San Francisco Orchestras, and also all the London orchestras. Garrick Ohlsson is an avid chamber musician who has collaborated with the Cleveland, Emerson, Takács and Tokyo string quartets, among other ensembles. Together with violinist Jorja Fleezanis and cellist Michael Grebanier, he is a founding member of the San Francisco-based FOG Trio.
Garrick Ohlsson discography is extensive, including the complete works of Chopin, and works by Brahms, Lizst and Scriabin. His undertaking of the complete Beethoven sonatas for Bridge Records has already resulted in 8 discs, the third of which won a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance.In the fall of 2008 the English label Hyperion re-released his 16-disc set of the complete works of Chopin.
Garrick Ohlsson was awarded the Avery Fisher Prize in 1994 and received the 1998 University Musical Society Distinguished Artist Award in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
CRISTINA ORTIZ
 Cristina Ortiz began her studies in her native Brazil before moving to Paris with a scholarship, where she worked with Magda Tagliaferro. She studied with Rudolf Serkin at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and won the gold medal at the third Van Cliburn Competition.
In her extensive career she has performed with various orchestras including the Berliner Philharmoniker, Wiener Philharmoniker, the Chicago Symphony, The Philharmonia and Royal Concertgebouw. She has collaborated with conductors such as Neeme Järvi, Mariss Jansons, Kurt Masur, André Previn and David Zinman.
Between recitals and concerto performances, Cristina Ortiz is a passionate and committed teacher, giving master-classes worldwide as well as private peripatetic lessons.
A recording career of some thirty albums on EMI Classics, Decca, Collins Classics, and most recently on Intrada, Naxos and BIS, covers interpretations of a most eclectic repertoire, including Beethoven, Brahms, Rachmaninov, Villa Lobos, Stenhammar, solo pieces by Clara Schumann, Waxman and a number of French and Spanish composers including a recent CD featuring the music of some of her favourite Brazilian composers.
PASCAL ROGE
 Pascal Roge has come to exemplify all that is best in French pianism today both in his continuous recital performances and extensive discography of the genre. He studied in the Paris Conservatory and also with Julius Katchen who had an important influence in his artistic development. Pascal is no stranger to competitions having himself won the first prize for piano at the age of twenty at the Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud Competition.
Pascal Roge has performed in almost every major concert hall in the world. Some of the orchestras he has appeared with include the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Montreal Symphony, L’Orchestre de Paris, L’Orchestre National de Radio France, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, the NHK Symphony Orchestra Tokyo, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, L’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Leipzig Gewandhaus and all the major London orchestras. He appears regularly in the United States and is a frequent guest artist in Australia, New Zealand, Latin America and especially Japan. Pascal Roge was for two years the Artistic Director of Incontri in Terra di Siena, a summer festival that takes place each year in Tuscany. He is enjoying playing recitals of music for four hands/one piano with his wife, the pianist Ami Roge.
His discography is extensive and includes the complete piano works of Poulenc and Ravel, four albums of Satie and a Bartok cycle with the LSO. His latest recording project is the Roge Edition, released on the Onyx Classics label, which has included his first complete Debussy cycle with four volumes issued so far. A special CD “Wedding Cake” covered music for Piano Duo played with his wife Ami Roge.
His recordings have won many prestigious awards including two Gramophone Awards, a Grand Prix du Disque and an Edison Award for his interpretations of the Ravel and Saint-Saens concertos.
JEREMY SIEPMANN
 Though long resident in England, he was born and formally educated in the United States. On completing his studies at the Mannes College of Music in New York, he moved to London, where he was eventually invited to join the staff of London University. For most of the last thirty years he has confined his teaching activity to the piano with his pupils including pianists of worldwide repute. He has also given numerous masterclasses on both sides of the Atlantic. In January 2004 he was appointed Professor of Musical Aesthetics and the History of Piano Performance at the International Piano Academy, Lake Como, Italy, and has recently joined the panel of lecturers at the Oxford University Department for Continuing Education.
As a writer he has contributed articles, reviews, interviews and programme notes to numerous journals, recordings and reference works. His books include highly acclaimed biographies of Chopin, Brahms, Mozart, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky, two volumes on the history and literature of the piano, and an introductory survey of chamber music. From December 1997 to February 2010 he was the editor of Piano magazine, while his series for Naxos Records – ‘Life and Works’ and ‘Classics Explained’ – have received exceptional accolades.
His career as a broadcaster began in New York in 1963 with an East Coast radio series on the life and work of Mozart. After a long break he returned to broadcasting in 1977, and has devised, written and presented more than 1,000 programmes, including the international-award-winning series The Elements of Music. In 1988 he was appointed Head of Music at the BBC World Service, broadcasting to an estimated audience of 135 million. He left the Corporation in Spring 1994 to form his own independent production company.
ELEANOR WONG
 Eleanor Wong pursued her musical studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London, England, on an Associated Board Scholarship with Frederic Jackson and Max Pirani. Besides winning numerous prizes and awards, Eleanor was one the few students graduated with both the Graduate Diploma (G.R.S.M), and the Recital Diploma as well as top honours: the Walter Macfarren Gold medal and Majorie Whyte Memorial Award for the most outstanding students. As a Boise Scholar, Eleanor studied in Paris with Vlado Perlemuter and later in New York with Artur Balsam. Winner of silver medal at the Viotti International Competition Italy, Professor Wong broadcasted on RTHK (Hong Kong), WNYC (New York), BBC (UK), and overseas services. She has also given recitals extensively in the United Kingdom, China, and the United States.
Presently, Professor Wong is an Artist in Residence and Senior Lecturer at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. She is also a visiting professor at the Shenzhen School of Arts and Wuhan Music Conservatory, and is also an honorary professor of the Tianjin Music Conservatory. She is also a Steinway Artist, Co-Director of the Hong Kong Summer Music, and the Chairperson of the Piano Teachers’ Association in Hong Kong. Professor Wong is also on the Board of Advisors for the Hong Kong Arts Development Council, Trinity Guildhall music exam (Hong Kong) and the Dalcroze Society of Hong Kong. In 2008, Professor Wong was elected one of 2007 Outstanding Leaders by Singtao Daily in Hong Kong for her contributions to the musical world.
She is also recognized as one of the foremost piano pedagogues with many of her pupils winning top prizes in international and local piano competitions. Eleanor Wong frequently hosted lectures and workshops on Piano Pedagogy and has given master-classes in China, Poland, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Uruguay and USA. She is also a frequent juror for various international piano competitions and festivals.
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