Artistic Director prof. Alessandra Schettino

predsednik žirije / presidente giuria / president of the jury

Riccardo Risaliti is a prominent figure in the world of Italian pianism and has for many years been active as a performer, teacher, scholar of interpretation and piano history, music critic, and musical organizer.
Born in Tuscany, he completed his studies at the Florence Conservatory, where he studied with Paolo Rio Nardi (a pupil of Ernesto Consolo and Ferruccio Busoni) and Luigi Dallapiccola. He later refined his training in masterclasses with distinguished musicians such as Nikita Magaloff, Carlo Zecchi, and Sergio Lorenzi.
His wide-ranging musical activity began at the Florence Conservatory itself, at the Teatro Comunale in Florence—where he made his debut with the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale—and at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena. His concert career developed after winning several international prizes, including the “Viotti” Competition in Vercelli and the “Pozzoli” Competition in Seregno.
He has performed in many important European venues, including La Scala in Milan, Teatro La Fenice in Venice, Teatro Regio in Parma, the Brescia and Bergamo Festival, and Victoria Hall in Geneva, undertaking tours with a particularly wide and distinctive repertoire. He has also been active in chamber music, collaborating with distinguished instrumentalists, singers, and chamber ensembles. He has given first performances of works by contemporary composers and has made several solo and chamber recordings.
His deep passion for the piano has led him to study extensively its history, repertoire, and performance practice. Active as a music critic and writer, he has contributed to newspapers and musical journals and has edited piano music publications for Ricordi, Curci, and Carisch.
He first held a professorship at the Conservatory of Pesaro and later taught for thirty years at the “G. Verdi” Conservatory in Milan. Since its foundation he has also been a faculty member of the International Piano Academy of Imola. He has given interpretation courses and seminars at numerous institutions, including the Mozarteum Sommerakademie in Salzburg, the Festival delle Nazioni in Città di Castello, Villa Ca’ Zenobio in Treviso, and many Italian conservatories. Many of his students—often prizewinners in major competitions—have gone on to successful concert and teaching careers.
He is frequently invited to serve on the juries of international piano competitions and on examination boards at European music universities. He is also the artistic director of international competitions and an organizer of concert seasons.

Italian pianist Martina Frezzotti is internationally renowned for her intense concert and teaching activities. A former student of Lazar Berman and Elisso Virsaladze, she studied at the Imola Piano Academy and the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, where she obtained her doctorate in 2012. Thanks to this training, she is often considered one of the leading interpreters and promoters of the Russian piano school tradition in Italy.
For over twenty years, she has been intensely active in Europe, Asia, and the United States, performing as a soloist and with orchestras, combining her concert activity with a constant commitment to international teaching. She is currently on the roster of Scaffardi Artists Management.
Her previous season opened with an acclaimed recital entirely dedicated to Chopin at Carnegie Hall in New York, where she received a standing ovation for her interpretations of the Four Ballades, the Twelve Études, Op. 25, and Scherzo No. 2. The same recital, also presented at the Reform Club in London, received an enthusiastic review from critic Christopher Axworthy.
Recent engagements include recitals for the Società dei Concerti di Trieste, concerts and conferences dedicated to female composers at the Teatro Comunale in Ferrara and the Teatro Alighieri in Ravenna, as well as a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Concerto No. 1 in Bulgaria, which received a standing ovation.
Her discography for Piano Classics – Brilliant Classics is dedicated to promoting female composers: her first two albums, dedicated to Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel (2022) and Amy Beach (2023), have received widespread international critical acclaim in magazines such as Gramophone, BBC Music Magazine, International Piano, Pianist, American Record Guide, Fanfare, and MusicWeb International. The recordings have been broadcast by stations such as BBC Radio 3, RAI Radio 3, SWR2, Ö1 ORF, SRF2, WWFM New York, and others.
During her career, she has performed in numerous countries including the United Kingdom, the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Austria, Poland, Bulgaria, Russia, Spain, and the Netherlands, in prestigious venues such as the Wiener Saal in Salzburg, the Kawai Concert Hall in Osaka, the Philharmonic Hall in Kiev, and the Warsaw Philharmonic, as well as for important Italian institutions such as the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, the Società dei Concerti di Milano, the Società dei Concerti di Trieste, Ferrara Musica, and other important concert institutions.
Alongside her concert and recording activities, Martina Frezzotti is also intensely involved in teaching: she is a piano teacher at the Conservatorio “G. Tartini” in Trieste. She has held masterclasses at the most prestigious European institutions, including the Trinity Laban Conservatoire in London, the Liszt Academy in Budapest, the Chopin University in Warsaw, and many others.

Hailed by the Washington Post as a « young artist displaying maturity and elegance », French pianist Olivier Moulin studied under Eric Heidsieck and Gery Moutier at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique of Lyon, where he was unanimously awarded first prize with honors. After advanced studies in the same institution, he continued his training in Austria at the Salzburg Mozarteum in the classes of Karl-Heinz Kämmerling and Clemens Hagen, where he obtained a Master of Arts with highest honors. Throughout his studies, he has also benefited from the advices of masters such as Aldo Ciccolini, Yvonne Loriod-Messiaen, Jacques Rouvier, Jean-François Heisser, Sergio Perticaroli…
Prizewinner of international piano competitions, he has been invited to participate in major international festivals : la Roque d’Anthéron, Montpellier and Radio-France, Lille Clef de Soleil, Pianos Folies in Le Touquet, Journées Lyriques in Chartres, Divonne, Sully-sur-Loire, La Vézère, Croisements Festival in China, Virtuosi Festival in Brazil, Festival Internacional de Piano En Blanco y Negro in Mexico, Istanbul’s Lisztomanias, Motley Tulip International Arts Festival in Belarus, Bellapais International Festival in Cyprus…
He has performed in prestigious venues in France (Grand Auditorium of Radio-France, Salle Gaveau, Salle Cortot, the Louvre Auditorium, Lyon and Avignon Operas, Cloître des Jacobins in Toulouse, Théâtre des Variétés in Monaco, Arsenal de Metz…), in Europe (Germany, Austria, Belgium, Belarus, Hungary, Spain, Norway, Portugal, Slovakia, Switzerland, Turkey…), Asia (Japan, China, South Korea, India, Indonesia…), and the Americas (USA, Brazil, Mexico). His concerts are regularly broadcasted by radio and television in France and abroad. Olivier made in 2014 U.S. debut at the French Embassy in Washington DC, where he played a recital devoted to Rameau, Debussy, Ravel.
He has also collaborated with several orchestras : Orchestre National de Metz, Ensemble Orchestral de Montbéliard, the Philharmonic Orchestra of Wuhan (China), the Camerata de Coahuila (Mexico)… His passion for chamber music has allowed him to share the stage with many artists such as David Guerrier, the Fine Arts Quartet, soloists of the Philharmonic of Radio-France, Bertrand Chamayou, Jérôme Dorival… He was also invited to Geneva and Chartres by Eve Ruggieri to take part in conference/concerts focusing on the life of Frederic Chopin. His first solo CD, devoted to Franz Liszt, was released in october 2011 for the french label AmeSon/Outhere.
Olivier Moulin is Professor of piano at the Nancy Conservatory (France), and President of the Epinal International Piano Competition. He regularly gives masterclasses in Europe, USA, Mexico, Japan, China … and is invited to serve as a member of the jury of many international piano competitions such as : Istanbul, Porto Santa Cecilia, Scriabin in Grosseto, Sviatoslav Richter International Piano Competition…

Bulgarian-born pianist Mirella Petrova began her musical education at the age of five at the “Professor Veselyn Stoyanov” music school in her native city of Russe. She gave her concert debut two years later with the Russe Philharmonic in a performance of Haydn’s Piano Concerto in C Major. In 1992, Ms. Petrova moved to Dresden, where she took up her studies with Professor Detlef Kaiser at the ‘Carl Maria von Weber’ College of Music. After successfully passing exams as pianist and educator, she completed a postgraduate course in piano ‘with distinction’, and a postgraduate course in chamber music with both Professor Kaiser and Peter Bruns. She developed as an artist through international master classes with Mikhail Wosskressenski, Klaus Hellwig, Karl-Heinz Kammerling, Detlef Kraus, Peter Rosel, Elza Kolodin, Christian Zacharias, Jacques Rouvier and Lazar Berman. She also expanded her knowledge of song composition by working with Olaf Bär, Gertrud Geissler and Semyon Skigin. Mirella Petrova has received many prizes in national and international competitions, such as the Usti nad Labem competition in the Czech Republic, the Maria Canals in Barcelona, Spain, and Konzerteum in Markopoulo, Greece. She was honored with the 1999-2000 DAAD Prize and received the Carl Maria von Weber scholarship award for music from the Art and Culture Foundation. Ms. Petrova has performed at festivals such as The Riga Music Festival in Latvia, the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival and Ruhr Piano Festival in Germany, and the Apollonia Festival of Arts, Varna Summer, and March Music Days festivals in Bulgaria. Her career has been documented through numerous radio and television recordings. Ms. Petrova has made guest appearances as a soloist under conductors such as Jörg-Peter Weigle, Naoshi Takahashi, Ivan Wulpe, and Aleksej Izmirliev. In addition to her solo concerts, Ms. Petrova has dedicated herself intensively to chamber music in a variety of areas, including piano duo, song duo, and chamber music with string instruments. She has undertaken concert tours in Greece, Poland, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Spain, Japan and Turkey. In 2014, Ms. Petrova released a CD called “A Wagner evening in Graupa” as a soloist with the Elbland Philharmonic Orchestra in Saxony. In that same year, she played the Beethoven Triple Concerto along with Sayako Kusaka, violin, and Peter Bruns, cello. In the spring of 2015, this trio played again the Triple Concerto with the Presidential Symphony Orchestra in Ankara, Turkey. In addition to her extensive concert performances, Mirella Petrova has taught piano and chamber music at the ‘Carl Maria von Weber’ College of Music since 1997.

The Austrian pianist and organist Johannes Wilhelm studied piano, chamber music, piano pedagogy, and organ at the Mozarteum University Salzburg and at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna.
Johannes Wilhelm performs worldwide as a chamber musician, soloist, and song accompanist. His artistic activity also includes an intensive collaboration with orchestras such as the Vienna Philharmonic, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, and the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, as well as with choirs such as the Monteverdi Choir, Il Canto di Orfeo, Collegium Vocale Gent, Chorus sine nomine, and the Konzertvereinigung Wiener Staatsopernchor, among others, including within the framework of the Salzburg Festival. Since 2011 Johannes Wilhelm has led his own piano class at the Mozarteum University, and in 2016 he obtained his artistic habilitation. In autumn 2022 he was appointed to direct the pre-college program for the keyboard department, whose aim is to support and promote outstanding young artists.