Jury 2021

Riccardo Risaliti was born in Prato and studied at the Cherubini Conservatory in  Florence, as a pupil of Rio Nardi and Luigi Dallapiccola. Among his teachers were also Nikita Magaloff, Carlo Zecchi and Sergio Lorenzi.
After initially working as assistant for piano coaching and chamber music at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena  and  at the Teatro Municipale in Florence, and as a music critic (for La Nazione in Florence), he won several piano competitions (Vercelli, Seregno, etc..) and began the career of concert pianist, making his debut with the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino.
He has played for various associations and festivals, among which feature: Teatro alla Scala, Accademia di S. Cecilia in Rome, Festival di Brescia e Bergamo, Teatro La Fenice in Venice, RAI in Rome and Turin.  As a performer of chamber music, he has often played with illustrious instrumentalists, singers and ensembles. As a soloist, he has often preferred particular repertoires (for the Ricordi label he recorded seldom played Liszt transcriptions). Recently he has experimented with contemporary music, performing some works for the first time.
He has been a teacher at the Conservatory in Pesaro, at the Milan Conservatory for 30 years since 1973, and has been professor and pedagogic advisor at the Incontri col Maestro International Piano Academy of Imola since its creation in 1989. He regularly holds master classes and summer courses at the Mozarteum of Salzburg and at the Festival delle Nazioni of Città di Castello. A scholar of piano literature and interpretation, he holds conferences and seminars. He also works as a journalist and editor of musical texts, and is often invited by international piano competitions as jury member.

Oliver Kern was born in 1970 in Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany, where he began studying piano at the age of 5. His artistic activity started when he was very young, and he stood out in the German musical scene for his brilliant achievements in international piano competitions. He graduated with a first-class degree in piano, orchestral conducting and choral conducting from the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Stuttgart, under the guidance of Wan Ing Ong. He then went on to specialize in piano with Rudolf Buchbinder and Karl-Heinz Kämmerling, at the Musik-Akademie in Basel and at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. Throughout his career, he has won a considerable number of awards in international piano competitions, including first and second prizes in the international competitions of Senigallia, Hamamatsu, Peking and Paris. He has attracted attention and positive reviews from critics by winning two prestigious competitions: the “ARD” award (prize) in Munich, in 1999, and the “Beethoven” award (prize) in Vienna, in 2001, having been the first German pianist to have won this award; in the latter he also received the special award for the best performance of Beethoven’s sonatas. He is much appreciated for his performance of Beethoven’s and Brahms’ music – critics have recognised his noteworthy possession of technical virtuosity that is not an end in itself, but rather oriented toward a thorough research into timbre and expression. His profound interpretation has led him to the realisation of seldom undertaken cultural projects such as the performance of Brahms’ complete works for piano solo in the Classix Festival Braunschweig: “With great intensity and poetry Oliver Kern is modelling the Brahms cycle.” (Braunschweiger Zeitung).
He has performed in important festivals and in famous halls throughout America, Asia and Europe, and has been acclaimed by audiences at esteemed concert venues such as: Musikverein and Konzerthaus Wien, Schauspielhaus Berlin, Musikhalle Hamburg, Herkulessaal Munich, Salle Gaveau Paris, Teatro alla Scala Milan, Auditorium St. Cecilia Rome, Century Hall Beijing , Saitama Arts Centre Tokyo, and the Seoul Arts Center. He has played with famous orchestras including the New Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, the Seoul Symphony Orchestra, the China National Symphony Orchestra, the Radio Symphony Orchestras of Berlin, Munich, Hannover and Vienna, and worked with eminent conductors such as Dennis Russell Davies, Michael Stern, Lu Jia, Marc Soustrot, Gerard Oskamp and Dmitri Yablonski. He has recorded for the German, Austrian, French, Italian and Japanese radio and television, and has published CDs of solo piano works by Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Ravel, Schubert, Schumann, Scriabin and Stravinsky on the “Realsound” label.
After having taught at the Hanyang University Seoul, College of Music, as professor of piano in 2008, Oliver Kern taught at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater, Hamburg as professor of piano, before taking his current position as professor of piano at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst, Frankfurt.

Born in Bari, she began the study of music at a very young age, integrating her classical studies with regular classes of Piano, Organ and Organ Composition at the “Niccolò Piccinni” Conservatoire of Bari.
Graduated with distinction in Piano, under the prestigious guidance of Michele Marvulli , at Conservatory of Bari, highly significant for her education and success they were also the esteems earned from great artists such as Franco Ferrara, Aldo Ferraresi, Lazar Bermann, Aldo Ciccolini, Noretta Conci Leech and particularly Nino Rota who appointed her as full-time piano teacher. Her concert activity as a solo pianist has taken her to perform in many Italian and foreign cities, with widespread success among the public. She also boasts an intense piano activity within various chamber music formations (duo, trio, quintet), with instrumentalists and singers. For several years she was opera couch conductor at the Petruzzelli Theatre of Bari.
She has played in Italy, Jugoslavia, Austria, Romania, Hungary, Poland, France, Germany , Finland and South America.
From 1977 to 2003 she was a permanent component of the Ferrari-Valente Piano Duo, which imposed itself in a number of national and international contests: “Belgrade”, “Casagrande”, “Alessandria”. In a duo formation (with recitals and concertos for two pianos with orchestra) she has held an intense activity in many Italian and foreign towns, playing monographic programmes and the integral of CLEMENTI, MOZART, BRAHMS, RACHMANINOFF, DEBUSSY, RAVEL, POULENC, and also contemporary repertoire:Luciano Berio – concerto for two pianos and orchestra, Bela Bartok – sonata for two pianos and percussion . Again in a piano duo she has performed live on RAI 1 and on various radio and TV programmes.
In her solo recitals, and with the new piano duo Valente-Larosa, she has often given a tone of specificity with either monographic or monothematic programmes or subject-based programmes or programmes with didactic purposes such as “the sonata form”, “ the transcription”, the “form of dance” and others, all introduced by lectures or listening guide.
She has been Art Director of the cultural and musical Association “Centro Studi Franz Liszt” RESEARCH@PRESS; now is president of Association Mozart Italy place of work of Bari. Already professor of piano at the “N. Piccinni” Conservatoire, she has taught to well-known pianists, among which a substantial number of teachers at various Italian Conservatoires and/or Music Academies. In the framework of her versatile activity, finally, Giovanna Valente gives seminars and specialisation courses in renowned Italian and foreign Academies, being regularly invited to be part the juries of international and national piano Contests.

Boris Bekhterev was born to a family of musicians. He began studying music at the age of five and was educated at Moscow’s Gnessin School of Music, being awarded a medal of merit at his graduation. He continued to improve his mastery until attaining a doctorate with outstanding results at Moscow’s Tchaikowsky Conservatoire, studying under the famous Maestro J. Milstein.
In 1970, having won first prize in the Soviet Pianists’ Competition, he began giving concerts both as a soloist and in duo with the outstanding violinist Vladimir Spivakov. Boris Bekhterev has played at some of the most prestigious concert halls in the Soviet Union, in Europe: Vienna’s Konzerthaus, The Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome, La Scala Theatre in Milan, in the United States: New York’s Carnegie Hall, in Japan and other nations. He boasts a very wide repertoire, which extends from the baroque style of Bach and Scarlatti, through Classicism and Romanticism, touching on French Impressionist culture, and arriving at the modern and contemporary composers. A large part of his repertoire consists of works by Russian composers. He has played with many orchestras in the Soviet Union and with chamber orchestras such as the Virtuosi of Moscow, the English Chamber Orchestra, the Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra of Budapest and the Prague Chamber Orchestra.
From 1972 to 1986 he taught at the Moscow Conservatoire. During that time, he also ran the Académie Internationale of Tours (France) advanced courses for four years.
From 1987 to 1996, Boris Bekhterev lived in Italy, where he continued to pursue his activities as a concert pianist, giving recitals and playing chamber music with violinists Boris Belkin, Uto Ughi and Pavel Berman, with the flutist, Maxence Larrieu, as well as teaching in various Master Classes. For several years, he has been a member of the “Trio Cesar Franck” (together with the violinist Felice Cusano, and the cellist Susan Moses) and gave concerts in Italy and in the United States.
In 1996 he was invited by Kobe College in Japan to be Professor of Piano and since 1998 he has been teaching also at Mukogawa University. During the 15 years he lived in Japan, he often played recitals and chamber music with well-known musicians from Japan and other countries as well as Lieder programs with famous singers.
He has been invited regularly to be part of the jury of important international competitions. In Japan he was part of the Jury of the most important piano competition in Tokyo “Mainichi Shimbun” for 7 years.
His records have enjoyed a good deal of success. Published by “Melodia” and EMI, they include Schubert’s sonatas, some rarely performed pieces by Prokofiev as well as many works performed together with Vladimir Spivakov. From 1994 to 2003 he recorded 6 CDs of Russian and European music for Phoenix Classics. Since then he has been recording for Camerata Tokyo, Japan. Eight CDs with music of Skriabin and Medtner have been released and have enjoyed very good reviews.
In 2015 he completed recording of all Skriabin compositions for piano solo.
Since 2011 he is back in Italy where he continues his pedagogic and artistic life.

Finished her primary and secondary musical education at the Pavao Markovac Music School in Zagreb in the class of professor Vilma Klajner (parallelly finishing the III. Gymnasium in Zagreb), and she graduated from the Musical Academy at the Zagreb University in the class of professor Ladislav Šaban in 1978. From then on she began building her teaching career at the Pavao Markovac Music School, where she was the head of the piano, harpsichord and organ department from 1997 to 2020. She had 38 high-school graduates, 21 of which continued their musical education at the Musical Academy of Zagreb and other renowned musical academies abroad, e. g. Kunstuniversität in Graz, Universität Mozarteum in Salzburg, Hochschule für Musik in Karlsruhe, Mannes School of Music and the City University of New York in New York, Indiana University School of Music in Bloomington and University of Miami, Florida, USA. In her 42-year long teaching career her students won more that 120 national and international awards, out of which 91 first places.
Jelica Kuzmin is the winner of the annual award of the Croatian Association of Music Teachers for great achievements in her work. She is a regular member of juries in national and international competitions and gives master classes for students and colleagues from music school all over Croatia.
As an active member of EPTA - Croatia, she participated with her students in conventions in Norway, Hungary and Slovenia.
In her work, she has been systematically showing the importance of chamber music-making at the earliest student age, she founded the piano chamber music festival in her department, and, in cooperation with her colleagues, she has been very successful and won many awards teaching piano four hands, six hands and eight hands.
Jelica Kuzmin conceived and started the Young Virtuoso – Zagreb international competition.
In 2004 she was elected by the Agency for education to be the head of professional boards of piano teachers.
In 2006 she has been promoted to the professor-mentor teaching rank and in 2008 to the rank of professor-counsellor.
Jelica Kuzmin, along with some of the music students' parents, founded the Leopold Mozart Association, which has been taking care of ZOKOR, the Zagreb Youth Chamber Orchestra, for many years.