Second round jury

Pablo Ferrández was born into a musical family in Madrid in 1991 and at the age of thirteen he entered the prestigious Reina Sofía School of Music. He then completed his studies at the Kronberg Academy (Germany) and received a scholarship from the Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation. He is the laureate of the XV International Tchaikovsky Competition. He performs with the very best international orchestras, such as the Bavarian Radio Symphony, the London Philharmonic, the Academy of St Martin in the Fields or the Israel Philharmonic, and with big-name conductors, including Manfred Honeck and Daniel Gatti. As a chamber musician, he often collaborates with artists such as Anne-Sophie Mutter, Vadim Repin, Martha Argerich, Gidon Kremer, Janine Jansen etc. In 2021, he issued his debut album under the SONY Classical label and it went on to win the Opus Klassik Award. He is getting ready to debut at the Salzburg Festival, for a European tour with the London Philharmonic and for recitals at Carnegie Hall and Wigmore Hall. He plays a Lord Aylesford Stradivarius from 1696 and an Archinto from 1689.

Roman Rabinovich debuted with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Zubin Mehta while still a ten-year-old. He won the Arthur Rubenstein International Piano Competition in 2008. His piano repertoire covers works from six centuries, from Byrd to Boulez and more modern authors. He has received great recognition from the critics for his interpretation of Haydn’s music. He has performed concerts all over Europe and the USA, for example in Leipzig’s Gewandhaus, London’s Wigmore Hall, the Grand Hall at the Moscow Conservatoire, Paris’ Cité de la Musique and the Kennedy Centre in Washington. He performs with orchestras such as the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Seattle Symphony, the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, the KBS Symphony or the Prague Philharmonic. He cooperates with conductors such as Sir Roger Norrington, Zubin Mehta, Kristjan Järvi, Gerard Schwarz and Joseph Swensen. At the start of the 2022/2023 season, he had his Carnegie Hall debut. Other peaks of this season include Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto no. 1 with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra or the Grieg Piano Concerto with the Edmonton Symphony.

Dmitry Sitkovetsky is a renowned violinist, conductor, composer, arranger, populariser and interpreter of music. In 1990, he established the New European Strings chamber orchestra which brought together the most significant string players from top-flight European ensembles, from the Russian and Western music environments. The name Dmitry Sitkovetsky has become a synonym for the art of transcription. His cult arrangements of Bach’s Goldberg Variations have taken on a life of their own: they are regularly performed on concert stages and many contemporary performers have made recordings of them. Sitkovetsky is also highly sought after as a jury member, a musical expert and a teacher. He was recently a jury member at the International Violin Competition in Indianapolis, the Concours Musical International de Montréal, the International Tchaikovsky Competition and the Enescu Violin Competition. He has many concerts throughout Europe and North America as a violinist and/or guest conductor in the 2022–2023 season, for example in Jerusalem, Berlin, Mexico City, Bucharest, Havana, Istanbul, Baku and Sophia.

The British French horn player Sarah Willis was born in the USA and grew up in Tokyo, Boston, Moscow and London. She had her first French horn lesson at the age of fourteen and studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in the British metropolis for three years before continuing her education under Fergus McWilliam in Berlin. In 1991–2001, she was a member of the Staatskapelle Berlin and in 2001 she became the first female brass player to get a chair with the Berlin Philharmoniker. She also plays with a number of other leading orchestras and has performed all around the world both as a soloist and as a chamber musician. She has recorded a series of well-received albums, of which the most recent is entitled “Mozart y Mambo” and combines the music of the classics with Cuban rhythms. She is also involved in teaching and educational activities, including teaching at the Karajan Academy and presenting family concerts by the Berlin Philharmoniker. Her contribution to classical music was acknowledged at the highest levels in Great Britain, when Queen Elizabeth II awarded her the prestigious Member of the Order of the British Empire in 2021.

Albena Danailova (violin)

Luc Mangholz (flute)

Ivo Kahánek (piano)