Jury members

Russian pianist Dmitri Alexeev is one of the world's most highly regarded artists. His critically praised recitals on the world's leading concert stages and his concert appearances with the most prestigious orchestras have secured his position as one of "the most remarkable pianists of the day" (Daily Telegraph). He has performed in the major concert halls around the world with most of great orchestras such as Berlin Philharmonic,,Chicago Symphony,Philadelphia Orchestra,Concertgebouw,all London orchestras etc. under many celebrated conductors ( Giulini,Ashkenazy,Boulez,Muti, Pappano, Temirkanov, Rozhdestvensky, Jansons,Gergiev,Tennstedt among others).

Michel Beroff was born in France in 1950. After graduating from the Paris conservatoire in 1966, he won the following year the first prize at the first international Olivier Messiaen piano competition. He has been since considered one of the most outstanding interpreter of Messiaen’s music. He then went on to play with the most prestigious orchestras around the world under the direction of such conductors as Abbado, Barenboim, Bernstein, Boulez, Dohnanyi, Dorati, Dutoit, Eschenbach, Gielen, Inbal, Jochum, Leinsdorf, Masur, Ozawa, Previn, Rostropovitch, Sinopoli, Solti, Tennsted, Tilson-Thomas, Zinman. As a chamber music partner , he has been very active playing with Martha Argerich , Barbara Hendricks Jean- Philippe Collard, Augustin Dumay, Pierre Amoyal, Lynn Harrell. As a conductor, Michel Beroff has been conducting the chamber orchestra de la Scala de Milano, the Russian state Orchestra, the Orchestre National de Lyon, the Orchestre National de Lille, the Cannes chamber orchestra, the Berkeley symphony, the Montréal youth orchestra.

Italian conductor Gianluca Marciano has been increasingly in demand since his operatic debut with Croatian National Opera in 2007. Praised in the Sunday Times for his "unfailingly theatrical and idiomatic conducting", Marciano has strong ties with the opera houses in Oviedo, Minsk, Tbilisi and Yerevan, and within the UK, English National Opera, Grange Park Opera, Longborough Opera and the English Chamber Orchestra. Engagements in the 2017-18 season include Andrea Chenier (Opera de Oviedo); Un ballo in Maschera (Grange Park Opera); Tosca (Festival Pucciniano, Torre del Lago) and Olimpiade (Teatro di San Carlo). Marciano is currently Principal Conductor of the Serbian National Theatre in Novi Sad, Serbia. He is also Artistic Director of the Al Bustan Festival in Beirut, where he has conducted works including Cherubini's Medee, Rossini's Stabat Mater and Berlioz' La Mort de Cleopatre. He is also founder and Artistic Director of the Festival Suoni dal Golfo in Lerici and Principal Guest Conductor of the National Academic Bolshoi Theatre of Belarus. Other recent engagements include Turandot and Nabucco for Opera de Oviedo; La traviata, Madama Butterfly and La Boheme for the Lithuanian National Opera; Tosca for Grange Park Opera; Nabucco for the Chelsea Opera Group; Elgar's Symphony No. 1 in Tokyo; Pagliacci in Moscow, Ernani and La traviata for Lithuanian National Opera.

Critically acclaimed as ‘...one of the greatest Interpreter of J.S. Bach´s work of his generation’, Pianist Stepan Simonian was born in 1981, studied at Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory under Pavel Nersessian and pursued his studies with the famous Pianist, Evgeni Koroliov, at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg. It was through this linage of well cultured tradition of piano school, that shaped Simonian’s musical taste and passion for the works from Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Beethoven, Bach and Mozart. He was the recipient of the Silver Medal at one of the oldest and most prestigious competitions in the world – the International Johann-Sebastian-Bach Competition in Leipzig 2010, Germany. He also won the 1st and the 3rd prize at Virginia Waring and Jose Iturbi International Piano Competitions both in USA and was awarded the prestigious Berenberg Cultural Prize 2009 in Hamburg in recognition of his achievements in chamber music. In 2014 he won the 3rd prize at Aram Khachaturian International Piano Competition in Armenia.

Wu Xiao, a leading Chinese pianist and educator, is currently the Chair of the Piano Department, Music Middle school Affiliated to Zhejiang Conservatory of Music. After Mr. Wu studied at the Primary & Middle School affiliated to Shanghai Conservatory of Music from 1993 to 2002 in piano performance, he was admitted to Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris in 2002 and graduated in 2004 with merit. Ranking with first prizes in 2006, he received the Degree of Master for Chamber Music at Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris and the Degree of Master for piano performance at Conservastoire Regional de Rueil-malmaison.