Featured Pianists
Joseph Banowetz
GRAMMY®-nominated American pianist Joseph Banowetz has been heard as recitalist and orchestral soloist on five continents, with performances with such orchestras as the St Petersburg Philharmonic, the Moscow State Symphony, the Prague and Bratislava Radio Orchestras, the Budapest Symphony, the Barcelona Concert Society Orchestra, the New Zealand Symphony, the Beijing National Philharmonic, the Shanghai Symphony, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, and the Seoul Philharmonic.
He is a graduate with a first prize from the Vienna Akademie für Musik und Darstellende Kunst, and his teachers have included Carl Friedberg (a pupil of Clara Schumann) and György Sándor (a pupil of Bartók). In 2010 his recording of the Paul Kletzki Piano Concerto (Naxos 8.572190) received a GRAMMY® nomination for “Best Instrumental Solo Performance With Orchestra”.
Sergio Gallo
A Steinway artist, Sergio Gallo specialises in the repertoire of the Romantic period. He has also championed the work of composers from Brazil, the nation of his birth. Gallo has performed with orchestras worldwide, and his work has been regularly played on international classical music radio outlets.
He holds the Diplôme d’Excellence from the Conservatoire Européen de Musique de Paris (1987), a Postgraduate Certificate from the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest (1992), a Master of Music and Artist Diploma from the University of Cincinnati (1994 and 1995 respectively), and a Doctorate of Musical Arts from the University of California, Santa Barbara (1998). Gallo resides in the US where he is professor of piano performance at Georgia State University in Atlanta and is on the affiliated artist staff of the Rocky Ridge Music Academy in Estes Park, Colorado.
Jouni Somero
Award-winning pianist Jouni Somero is one of the most active performers among contemporary Finnish musicians . He began playing organ when he was eight years old, but switched to the piano at the age of twelve, studying in Switzerland and at the Music Academy, Cologne under Professor Herbert Drechsel. He was also mentored by György Cziffra and Michael Ponti, who has acted as Somero’s musical advisor. His vast, critically acclaimed discography spans over 100 recordings for labels including Naxos, Sony BMG and FC Records among others, and includes world première recordings of several piano works by Blumenfeld, Godard, Seeling and Reinhold. Somero has also recorded the complete piano works of Bortkiewicz, Tchaikovsky and Kuula, as well as the complete piano and chamber music of Salmenhaara. His wide repertoire includes seldom heard music by, among others, Alkan, Godowsky and Rubinstein.
Paul Stewart
Canadian pianist Paul Stewart launched his career in 1981 with a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, with the Toronto Symphony. Since then he has appeared frequently in concert throughout Canada, the USA (including Carnegie Hall, New York and the Kennedy Center, Washington), Mexico, South America, the United Kingdom, Europe, South Africa and Asia. He is often invited as guest-soloist with major orchestras in Canada and abroad, and has collaborated with such artists as James Ehnes, Maureen Forrester, Ben Heppner, Jessye Norman, Mstislav Rostropovich, Pinchas Zukerman, and the Leipzig, Prague and Moscow String Quartets.
In 1995, his British début at Wigmore Hall, London was broadcast by the BBC, and a performance of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 4 with the Moscow State Radio Orchestra was broadcast throughout Russia and subsequently released on a bestselling CD. Other recordings include works by Beethoven, Britten, Honegger, Liszt, Prokofiev, Ravel, Schubert and Strauss.
He has championed and performed Nikolai Medtner on four continents. Volume 1 in this series received enthusiastic critical acclaim. ‘…Stewart launches a deeply personal and complex project with unfailing mastery and acute stylistic awareness’ (Gramophone). “This is pianism at its pinnacle. Stewart’s dynamic range is amazing… but through all the virtuosic wizardry that leaves one agape, there emerges an artist of poetic sensitivity who makes every measure of Medtner’s music sing” (Fanfare).
Paul Stewart has been a Professor of Piano at the Université de Montréal, Canada since 2002.
Artem Yasynskyy
Artem Yasynskyy entered the Special School for Gifted Children in Donetsk at the age of seven and gave his first public concert at the age of eight. Numerous competition successes followed, and a scholarship granted by the President of Ukraine, from 2006 to 2010, enabled him to study at the Prokofiev State Academy of Music which saw him graduating with honours. In 2010, Yasynskyy moved to Germany to continue postgraduate piano studies at the University of the Arts in Bremen, and in June 2011 he was awarded the Steinway Förderpreis in Hamburg, becoming, in July of the same year, a scholar of the Hans und Stefan Berbeck Stiftung. A grant from the Clavarte Stiftung enabled him to make this recording. Yasynskyy is the recipient of numerous awards and competition prizes. He received the gold medal at the Cincinnati World Piano Competition in 2015 which led to his debut at Carnegie Hall. His concert appearances have taken him throughout Germany and to Italy, South Korea, Greece, Japan, the US, Spain and Russia, as well as appearing at several international music festivals. He made his recording debut with an album of works by Józef Hofmann on the Grand Piano Label in May 2015 [GP765], and in September 2016 he recorded the present album of sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti.
He Yue
He Yue was born in 1990 and began to play the piano at the age of six. He studied with Keng Zhou and Beihua Tang and matriculated at the Affiliated Middle School of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music in 2008. In 2007 he took part in the 49th International Piano Competition “Jaen” and was awarded the prize for the youngest pianist. In the same year, he participated in three concerts in three cities in Spain and in October 2007 joined in the 4th International Piano Festival at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music in Shanghai Concert Hall. He Yue has performed extensively throughout China and has participated in various festivals, including the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 7th international Piano Festivals at Shanghai Conservatory of Music, and studied with Peter Frankl, Boris Berman, Anton Kuerti, Michael Enderes, Mack McCray, Shi Kun Liu, Hung Kuan Chen and Da Ming Zhu, amongst others.
He graduated from the Piano Department of Shanghai Conservatory of Music in 2012 with a bachelor’s degree.
