The 2010 Competition Jury

Cohen came to prominence after winning First Prize at the 1972 Busoni International Piano Competition. For five years he was a member of the acclaimed Amadeus Trio and has recorded for several labels, including BIS, VOX and NAXOS. His most recent CDs include the complete Piano Concertos by Liszt and Rachmaninoff.

An artist of diverse interests, Cohen graduated from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro with an honors degree in both piano and violin, while also studying for an engineering degree. He went on to become a professional violinist in the Rio de Janeiro Opera House Orchestra to earn his livelihood while continuing piano studies with Jacques Klein, a disciple of the legendary American pianist William Kapell.

Cohen was admitted a Fellow of the Royal Northern College of Music (Honoris Causa) in 2000 and was the recipient of the Broadwood Fellowship (1992-2000). He is also the recipient of the “Rio Branco” Medal awarded by the President of Brazil for his contribution to the cultural development of his country. Until 2004, he held a professorship at the Royal Academy of Music in London.

He has been selected to serve on several international juries including the Busoni International Piano Competition and Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw. After living in London for 23 years, he relocated to the United States where he holds a full professorship at Indiana University in Bloomington.

She later studied with Alfred Cortot and was a lifelong disciple of Wilhelm Kempff. From the age of sixteen Idil Biret has given concerts throughout the world with major orchestras under eminent conductors. She has participated at many festivals, adjudicated at major piano competitions, and received many awards and decorations in France, Italy, Poland, Turkey, England and the USA. Idil Biret has made over eighty records including Liszt’s transcriptions of the nine Beethoven Symphonies, the complete piano works of Brahms, Chopin and Rachmaninov, as well as the three Piano Sonatas of Boulez and the Etudes of Ligeti. These recordings have won many awards and sold over two million copies worldwide. Idil Biret has recently recorded the thirty-two Sonatas of Beethoven.

Born in Edinburgh in 1928, she studied at the University of Edinburgh then in Paris, where she spent four years as a pupil of Nadia Boulanger. In 1970 she was named guest professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, which anchored her increasing involvement with the musical life of the United States. In 1971 she married the American violist and opera conductor Peter Mark and she now lives in the US. She was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s New Year Honours List in 2002. As Distinguished Professor at Queens College, City University of New York from September 1987 to 2002, she guided many young and gifted student composers. With a list of works that includes ten operas and two ballets, Thea Musgrave is a composer whose creativity is based on a vivid dramatic instinct. Even her concert works may be conceived as dramatic scenarios between individual instruments and orchestral sections, the drama on occasions emphasised by staging instructions to the musicians. Her music has been widely performed in Britain, Europe and the USA and at the major music festivals, such as Edinburgh, Warsaw Autumn, Florence Maggio Musicale, Venice Biennale, BBC Proms, Aldeburgh, Cheltenham and Zagreb, on most of the European and American broadcasting stations and in concert halls throughout the world.

Ogawa regularly commissions new works and in 2008-09 Ogawa performs premieres of works by Fujikura and Kanno.

Ogawa is an exclusive recording artist for BIS Records. Her discography includes Takemitsu Riverrun (Editor’s Choice – Gramophone Magazine) and Mussorgsky ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ (Critics’ Choice – BBC Music Magazine). Ogawa’s ongoing series with BIS presents the complete solo works for piano by Debussy, which has already won critical acclaim.

Ogawa has received the Japanese Ministry of Education’s Art Prize in recognition of her outstanding contribution to the global cultural profile of Japan. Since 2004 Ogawa has acted as artistic advisor for the MUZA Kawasaki Symphony Hall. Ogawa made her debut solo recital at Suntory Hall in February 2008. A regular contributor to the music press, Ogawa has recently released her first book in Japan ‘Together with the Piano’.

Known for his Beethoven performances and his recording of all the Beethoven sonatas, Perl has also recorded solo works by Schumann, Liszt and Busoni, and a number of chamber music recordings. He also recorded the Grieg Piano Concerto, Szymanowski’s Sinfonia Concertante and has released a recording of both Liszt Piano Concertos with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Yakov Kreizberg.

Recent and forthcoming highlights include concerts with Sydney Symphony and a recital at Sydney Opera House, concerts with the Gewandhaus Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Hallé Orchestra as well as recitals at Teatro Municipal de Santiago, Wigmore Hall, Leipzig Gewandhaus, Bath International Music Festival, Bonn Beethovenfest, Rheingau and Schleswig Holstein Festivals and Schwetzingen Festspiele amongst others.

Alfredo Perl has recently taken up the baton and will be conducting several concerts with his Detmold Chamber Orchestra. He was also a jury member of the 2009 Bonn Beethoven Competition.

He produced studio recordings of all the Beethoven sonatas and the major works of Schubert with Alfred Brendel, and in 1991 coordinated Radio 3’s celebration of the Mozart bicentenary and the special Mozart day promoted by the European Broadcasting Union of live concerts and broadcasts from eight European cities that had strong links with Mozart.

For many years he was an animator of international cooperation in music broadcasting and chairman of the EBU’s music group. At the BBC he was deputy head of Radio 3’s music department and editor of its contemporary music output, with special responsibility for the commissioning of new music. His programme making activities for Radio 3 continued in the independent sector and he is still a regular broadcaster, often as a contributor to Radio 3’s Saturday Review.

In 1994 he received the Leslie Boosey Award from the Performing Right Society and the Royal Philharmonic Society for his contribution to contemporary music, and in 2003 he was awarded honorary membership of the Royal Academy of Music. As a pianist he studied with James Gibb and in recent years he has had informal consultations with Claude Frank and Richard Goode in the USA.

Stephen lives in London and East Anglia.

Ms Postnikova has performed with many conductors, including Adrian Boult, Kurt Masur, Sir Colin Davis and her husband, Gennadi Rozhdestvensky. Amongst others, she has worked with the Berlin Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw, Santa Cecilia Rome, BBC Scottish Symphony, Orchestra of Teatro San Carlo Naples, the London orchestras, New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony and the Cleveland and Philadelphia orchestras. In addition to numerous tours to Europe and Japan, she has appeared with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra in South America and with the BBC Symphony Orchestra in Australia and the Far East.

She has recorded all three Tchaikovsky Concerti for Decca, the Busoni Piano Concerto as well as the complete piano music of Tchaikovsky, Janacek and Glinka for Erato, violin sonatas by R. Strauss and Busoni for Chandos and the complete piano concerti of Brahms, Chopin and Prokofiev among many other recordings for Melodia.

She is also an accomplished chamber musician, having given concerts in the CIS and France with Yehudi Menuhin featuring the complete Brahms violin and piano sonatas along with sonatas by Mozart, Beethoven and Bartok.

Martin Roscoe is a versatile musician who flourishes in performance, whether as a concerto soloist, recitalist or chamber musician. He is an artist who endeavours always to serve the composer and the music. His enduring popularity and solid reputation are built on a deeply thoughtful musicianship which is allied to an easy rapport with audiences and fellow musicians alike.

One of Britain’s most prolific recitalists, Roscoe performs at the Wigmore Hall every season. His chamber music partnerships include some long standing collaborations with artists such as Tasmin Little, Michael Collins, Peter Donohoe, Steven Osborne, the Leopold String Trio and the Brodsky, Endellion and Sorrel Quartets.

Roscoe’s numerous recording projects have included recent releases such as James MacMillan’s The Berserking for Chandos and the ongoing series of Beethoven violin sonatas with Peter Cropper for Sanctuary Classics. He is now recording the complete piano sonatas for the Deux-Elles label.

Roscoe’s current diary includes concerto performances with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and recordings with the BBC Philharmonic. His chamber engagements include performances at the Wigmore Hall, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester and Musée d’Orsay, Paris. During the 2009/10 season he will record a disc of French repertoire for violin and piano with the young violinist Jennifer Pike.

“…Roscoe remains one of the most reassuring voices, bringing mastery and sheer musical quality to bear on everything he plays…”
(The Gramophone)

For sixteen years she was the pianist of the award-winning group Domus, and since 1993 has been the pianist of the Gaudier Ensemble. In 1995 she co-founded the Florestan Trio, now one of the world’s leading piano trios and one of the most-recorded. The trio won a 1999 Gramophone Award and a Royal Philharmonic Society Award 2000. Its own festival, the Florestan Festival at Peasmarsh, has been running for 14 years.

Susan is also the author of three books about performing music: ‘Beyond the Notes’ (2004), ‘A Musician’s Alphabet’ (2006) and ‘Out of Silence’, to which The Guardian devoted a whole page of excerpts when it came out in March 2010. ‘Out of Silence’ was a Book of the Month in several magazines, and the Times Literary Supplement wrote that ‘Susan has a particular understanding of humanity rare in writing about music’. Earlier this year, The Times singled out Susan’s writing for particular praise: ‘The most successful writers are often musicians themselves – Robert Schumann in the 19th century, for example, and Susan Tomes in the 21st.’

Susan writes articles and book reviews for The Guardian, and reviews books for The Independent. She has written and presented programmes on BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4. She gives masterclasses, sits on competition juries and award panels, gives seminars, and is a keynote speaker at dinners and conferences. Her blog at www.susantomes.com is currently one of the leading classical music blogs written entirely by one person.