Jury members

Cordelia Höfer was born in Munich. She started her piano lessons with 6 years and completed her studies in piano at the conservato¬ries in Salzburg (Hans Leygraf) and Munich (Klaus Schilde) with highest honors. In Salzburg she also studied conducting (Gerhard Wimberger). She acquired further valuable inspiration from Wilhelm Kempff, Sandor Vegh, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Tatjana Nikolajewa and Elisabeth Leonskaja. Her extensive concert experi¬ence involving solo appearances with renowned orchestras and chamber music took her to many countries in Europe, to the USA , Chile, Korea, Japan and China. She has appeared in numerous festivals: “Mostly Mozart” in New York, “Kontrapunkte” at the Salzburger Osterfestspiele, the Kuhmo Festival in Finland, the Mozart-Woche in Cluj (Romania), the Summer Festival in Portogruaro (Italy) , the Eurasia Music Festival in Seoul (Korea), Shanghai Piano Festival (China), among many others. CD's with Ruggiero Ricci, Rainer Honeck, Thomas Riebl, Sarah Willis and Kotowa Machida etc.

German pianist Gesa Luecker gave her first public concert aged nine and her orchestral debut followed when she was 12 years old. She studied with Martin Dörrie and Matti Raekallio at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater, Hannover up until the concert exam program; further work with luminaries such as Arie Vardi, Fabio Bidini and Jerome Rose made an important contribution to her musical development. She was a prize winner of the Bruno-Frey-Stiftung, of the Hannover Chopin Society and of national and international competitions. She has given concerts as a soloist with various orchestras; her performances brought her to halls such as the large hall of the NDR Hannover, Yamaha Hall New York, Carnegie Hall (Weill Recital Hall) and Mannes College of Music in New York City, Wigmore Hall London, Oriental Arts Center Shanghai and Tsinghua University Beijing. Her chamber music partners include soloists from the Amsterdam Concertgebouworkest, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Düsseldorfer Symphoniker as well as artists like Tanja Becker-Bender, Sayaka Schmuck, Christoph Eß and others.

Concert pianist, recording artist, master teacher, and author Jura Margulis has been internationally recognized for his compellingly communicative and emotionally charged performances, as well as for the range of his expressive tonal palette and his consummate transcendental virtuosity. Reviewers have praised the "absolute authority" of his interpretations and the sense of "controlled obsession" he transmits at the keyboard (Fono Forum). The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung noted that his aesthetic is both "impulsive and contemplative." The Los Angeles Times praised his "excellent pianism" and called him "highly musical". The Washington Post applauded his "titanic reserves of sheer power" and his "effortless spontaneity." The Fort Worth Star-Telegram called his performance "… the perfect Beethoven for the audience of our time … sweeping lyricism … imagination, originality, and good taste pervaded every phrase." In August of 2011 Drehpunkt Kultur in Salzburg stated: "After the performance one fleetingly thinks of the pianists that became legends, but comparisons are impermissible. Margulis is a master sui generis (of his own kind)."

The Russian-American classical pianist and piano professor Lev Natochenny studied with Lev Oborin, Boris Zemliansky and Eliso Virsaladze, working on chamber music with Alexei Lubimov and in the violin class with David Oistrakh. In 1978 he was granted the permission to leave the USSR, and awarded at the International Piano Competition in Bolzano, Italy, while still being stateless.

The pianist Ralf Nattkemper is widely recognized by international critics as an outstanding representatives of the German pianistic tradition. He studied with the Russian-Brasilian pianist Yara Bernette, the Italian-Argentinian pianist Fausto Zadra and with Wilhelm Kempff. He plays regularly in most European countries and musical centers such as Hamburg, Rotterdam, Brussels, Venice, Rome, Madrid, Tokyo, Caracas, Sofia etc., and is a frequent guest at numerous festivals, e.g. Venice, Verona, Assisi, Santander, Wallonie, Colonia Tovar (Venezuela). He has played with celebrated orchestras, e.g. l'orchestre de chambre de Lausanne, Hamburger Symphoniker, Bucharest Radio Symphony Orchestra, l'orchestra municipal de Caracas, Bulgarien Radio Symphony Orchestra, Nagoya symphonic ect.